In the 1960s and 1970s, activists who focused on the academy as a key site for fostering social change began by querying the assumptions of the traditional disciplines and transforming their curricula, putting into place women’s and ethnic studies programs that changed both the subject and methods of scholarship. The pattern of scholars and activists joining forces to open fields of research and teaching continued in subsequent decades, and recent additions, including critical race studies, queer studies, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies, take as their epistemological foundation the inherently political nature of all knowledge production. Interdisciplinarity and Social Justice seizes this opportune moment in the history of interdisciplinary fields to review their effects on our intellectual and political landscape, to evaluate their ability to deliver promised social benefits, and to consider their futures. The essays collected in this volume detail histories of the interdisciplinary fields that emerged from social movements, examine how effectively they have achieved their goals of intellectual and social change, and consider the challenges they now face inside and outside the academy.
Table des matières
1. Interdisciplinarity and Social Justice: An Introduction
Joe Parker and Ranu Samantrai
I. Critiques of Disciplinarity
2. Metaphors of Globalization
Lisa Lowe
3. Crossing the Immigration and Race Border: A Critical Race Theory Approach to Immigration Studies
Mary Romero
4. Whiteness in a Red Room: Telling Stories and Legal Discourse in the Tribal Courtroom
Raquel Montoya-Lewis
5. An Emergent Extra-Disciplinarity: Worlding Arabs, Activist Representation, and the Example of Ahdaf Soueif
Mrinalini Chakravorty
II. Critiques of Interdisciplinary Fields
6. Cultural Studies: Justice, Values, and Social Class
Patrick Brantlinger
7. The Other Inters: Augmenting Academic Disciplinarity to Make Things (Happen)
Alexandra Juhasz
8. The Ethico-politics of Dedisciplinary Practices
Joe Parker
9. The Limits of Interdisciplinarity: The Case of Chicano Studies
Michael Soldatenko
III. Interdisciplinary Claims to Social Justice
10. Whiteness Studies and the Paradox of Particularity
Robyn Wiegman
11. Interdisciplinarity: A Consideration from African American Studies
Lindon Barrett
12. Imagined Immunities: Border Rhetorics and the Ethos of
Sans Frontièrisme
D. Robert De Chaine
13. Toward Collaborative Coalitions: From Internationalism to Interdisciplinarity
Leila Neti
14. Interdisciplinary Investigations and Cross-Sector Interventions
Ellen Messer-Davidow
15. Accounting for Interdisciplinarity
Miranda Joseph
Afterword: Justice Without Truth?
Ranu Samantrai
List of Contributors
Index
A propos de l’auteur
Joe Parker is Associate Professor of International and Intercultural Studies at Pitzer College. He is the author of
Zen Buddhist Landscape Arts of Early Muromachi Japan (1336–1573), also published by SUNY Press.
Ranu Samantrai is Associate Professor of English at Indiana University at Bloomington. She is the author of
Alter Natives: Black Feminism in the Postimperial Nation.
Mary Romero is Professor of Justice Studies at Arizona State University. She is the author of
Maid in the U.S.A. and the editor of several books, including (with Eric Margolis)
The Blackwell Companion to Social Inequalities.