Interdisciplinarity in the Arts and Humanities: Research, Policy, Publishing

The Swedenborg Society in Bloomsbury, London, on Friday 20th March 2009

Registration 9:30 am; Conference begins at 10:00 am.

This conference sets out to consider the emergence of interdisciplinary research within the Arts and Humanities during the last 40 years. Emerging out of the political, social and cultural ambitions of a changing western world from the 1960s onwards, as well as the academic corollaries of these endeavours, interdisciplinarity within the academy became a means of developing a new and complex understanding of what it means to situate oneself: to act, teach, and undertake research in a world that no longer broke down according to existing disciplinary boundaries.
The shifting terrain for these scholarly, institutional, and personal politics became manifest in, for instance, the emergence of cultural studies, media studies or, more recently, visual culture studies; the importation of ‘theory’ within the academy; the political investment captured in the institutionalization of postcolonial theory, queer theory, and feminism within the University; as well as the emergence of new trans-disciplinary problematics such as globalization. Some of this genealogy has been written. And yet, more work needs to be done. Our interest in this genealogy is to consider it in light of the histories of interdisciplinarity within an expanded field: to think of the social, political and academic field of interdisciplinarity, and its relation to publishing, governmental policy and funding bodies.

Within this expanded context, it is possible to propose that as a result of these necessary incursions within the social and academic field, a forum was required for the public interrogation and dissemination of our past and present cultures. Thus, the interdisciplinary journal, in particular, emerged in both the UK and US as a ready and willing space within which to debate the complexity and intertwined nature of these cultures. Having very specific political and epistemological agendas, these journals created an arena for dialogue, provided us with new, interdisciplinary knowledge, while shaping our understanding of the world. This genealogy has not been written, and is one of the main streams/points of interrogation of our conference.

Interdisciplinary journals are, in many respects, the primary means of (print and electronic) dissemination, and continue to be the contemporary ‘gold star’ of research achievement. Yet journal publishing is rarely discussed on its own terms. Equally, with the catchword – ‘interdisciplinarity’ – in the air, government funding bodies and policy makers have caught on to it, and today it has become an overarching term for a type of research evacuated of its earlier political, social and cultural commitments. Or did it? The third stream of this conference will consider the history and political ramifications for interdisciplinary research as a result of institutional and governmental seizure. As such, this conference is the first to bring together the relationship between journal publishing, policy-making and research itself, so as to discuss the future of interdisciplinary work in the Arts and Humanities of the twenty first century.

Contributors

Professor GEORGINA BORN, Sociology, Anthropology, and Music, University of Cambridge / Dr DAVID CUNNINGHAM, Literature and Aesthetics, University of Westminster, Editor of ‘Radical Philosophy’ / Professor THOMAS DOCHERTY, English and Comparative Literature, Warwick University / Dr JEREMY GILBERT, Cultural Studies, UEL, Editor of ‘New Formations’ / Professor SUSAN MELROSE, Performance Arts, Middlesex University / Dr JOANNE MORRA, Art History and Theory, University of the Arts London, Principal Editor of ‘Journal of Visual Culture’ / Professor PETER OSBORNE, Director, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University, Editor of ‘Radical Philosophy’ / Professor ADRIAN RIFKIN, Art Writing, Goldsmiths College, former Editor of ‘Art History’ / Dr MARQUARD SMITH, Visual Culture Studies, University of Westminster, Editor-in-Chief of ‘Journal of Visual Culture’ / Professor SHEARER WEST, Director of Research, AHRC / Dr JOANNA ZYLINSKA, Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College, Editor of ‘Culture Machine’

This conference is organized by: Dr DAVID CUNNINGHAM (University of Westminster and Editor of ‘Radical Philosophy’), Dr JOANNE MORRA (Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and Principal Editor of ‘Journal of Visual Culture), Dr MARQUARD SMITH (University of Westminster and Editor-in-Chief of ‘Journal of Visual Culture’), and Dr JOANNA ZYLINSKA (Goldsmiths College and Editor of ‘Culture Machine’)

This conference is the first in a series of projects and events organized by the Network for Editors of Interdisciplinary Journals (NEIJ).