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Prof. Robert Meally of the Center for Jazz Studies
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Our interdisciplinary partners Doctoral students in Columbia's English department have the opportunity to link their course work, research interests, and academic advisement with the following interdisciplinary bodies, with which the English and Comparative Literature department is affiliated: The Center for Comparative Literature and Society (CCLS) was founded at Columbia in 1998 to promote a global perspective in the study of literature, culture, and its social context. It houses the interdepartmental undergraduate and graduate programs in comparative literature and society. It draws its faculty from the humanities, the social sciences, and the Schools of Architecture and Law. The Center for Jazz Studies is the first academic center in the United States dedicated to exploring the interaction between jazz and American culture. Its founder and director, English Professor Robert O'Meally, is a leading interpreter of the dynamics of jazz in American culture. The Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race provides a venue for collaborative and comparative projects on the subjects of ethnicity and race. It reaches across disciplinary boundaries and promotes interdisciplinary research and teaching. Within the department, the Doctoral Program Subcommitte on Theater sets the curriculum and advises doctoral students whose studies focus on drama, drama history, and theories of performance.
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How students become engaged
Throughout their coursework, doctoral candidates at Columbia have a lot of flexibility, which they can use to pursue their interdisciplinary interests. Students are encouraged to take advantage of lectures and seminars offered by the various interdisciplinary centers. They are also encouraged to take courses in neighboring departments, such as anthropology, history, and literature in languages other than English. It is in the courseworks stage that many students make connections with faculty members affiliated with each of the interdisciplinarity centers. Often, the interdisciplinary nature of a student's work simply evolves organically out of this process. This is especially true of Jazz Studies and the Center for Ethnicity and Race, since they do not have separate applications and do not stipulate guidelines for affiliation. At the orals stage, students can elect to follow the Center for Comparative Literature's guidelines. The process is slightly different for Theatre students, as they apply directly to the Theatre subsection of the department and follow its guidelines throughout the program.
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Brander Matthews, First Professor of Dramatic Literature, by E.E. Simmons, CA.1890
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What educational purpose does interdisciplinary study serve? Our department has always sought to situate literature within its broader cultural and historical context. We thus see interdisciplinary study as an inherent part of the study of literature. The various interdisciplinary centers at Columbia allow students the flexibility to incorporate an interdisciplinary approach in the manner that best suits their interests and that encourages cross-fertilization within the Columbia community and in the broader community of knowledge. Our participation in the CID takes for granted that an introspective look at the doctoral program in literature must take into account the interdisciplinary needs of today's evolving scholars.
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Reflection from a student
My name is Richard Jean So, and I am a 3rd year graduate student in English specializing in Asian American studies. While my home department of English has consistently supported my work, I have recently turned to the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (CSER) for further material and intellectual sustenance. CSER, and in particular its director Gary Okihiro, have begun playing a crucial role in my graduate education. Asian American studies, like many other emerging new sub-disciplines in the humanities, relies heavily on an interdisciplinary approach. Working through CSER, I have had the chance to meet and study with a friendly cadre of anthropology, history, and sociology graduate students and faculty. CSER has decidedly broadened both my intellectual and professional range by introducing me to topics and research areas that would have remained unknown had I remained mono-focused within English. It has connected me to an exciting and new body of interdisciplinary scholarship that, I am convinced, will decisively enhance my career as a teacher and scholar.
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Prof. Julie Peters of the Subcomittee on Theatre
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Reflection from a faculty member In the early 1990s, building on its historical academic strengths and its New York City location (at the center of both traditional and avant-garde American theatrical production), Columbia founded the Subcomittee on Theatre, which offers a Ph.D. in theatre, housed simultaneously in the English Department and the School of the Arts, in which students work under the guidance of faculty from a range of departments (literature, classics, history, anthropology, film). The program has, in large part, served its function: to provide a newly rigorous training-ground for scholar-practitioners, who bring their training in dramatic literature, theatre history, and performance theory to the teaching of theatre (both its history and practice), while producing theatre with deeper intellectual foundations. As a secondary benefit, students of dramatic literature in the English department learn to read from the practitioner's viewpoint, understanding drama more deeply through exposure to its material and institutional instantiations. If students in the program have sometimes felt adrift between two institutional homes, uncertain of quite where they belong or who can advocate for them (in the absence of a formal department), the benefits of the program's interdisciplinarity are immense. If the program has not exactly produced an intellectual home for faculty working on theatre and performance, it has nonetheless bound us together institutionally.
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