Interdisciplinarity—or the interrelationships among distinct fields, disciplines, or branches of knowledge in pursuit of new answers to pressing problems—is one of the most contested topics in higher ...education today. Some see it as a way to break down the silos of academic departments and foster creative interchange, while others view it as a destructive force that will diminish academic quality and destroy the university as we know it. In Undisciplining Knowledge, acclaimed scholar Harvey J. Graff presents readers with the first comparative and critical history of interdisciplinary initiatives in the modern university. Arranged chronologically, the book tells the engaging story of how various academic fields both embraced and fought off efforts to share knowledge with other scholars. It is a story of myths, exaggerations, and misunderstandings, on all sides.
Touching on a wide variety of disciplines—including genetic biology, sociology, the humanities, communications, social relations, operations research, cognitive science, materials science, nanotechnology, cultural studies, literary studies, and biosciences—the book examines the ideals, theories, and practices of interdisciplinarity through comparative case studies. Graff interweaves this narrative with a social, institutional, and intellectual history of interdisciplinary efforts over the 140 years of the modern university, focusing on both its implementation and evolution while exploring substantial differences in definitions, goals, institutional locations, and modes of organization across different areas of focus.
Higher education scholars, faculty members, and administrators and will find the book’s practical advice on building, operating, and avoiding fallacies and errors in interdisciplinary research and education invaluable.
Interdisciplinarity is among the most talked about but most misunderstood topics in education on all levels today. Seen as the savior of research and teaching, especially in universities, and of ...society, or the seeds of destruction, interdisciplinarity's proponents and critics talk past each other. Seldom do they seek common terms; typically, they mean very different approaches when they refer to interdisciplinarity. They erroneously dichotomize disciplines and interdisciplines, confuse specialization and synthesis, and misconstrue “integration.” They also date the historical turn to interdisciplinarity too late. This article critically reviews the history, historiography, and sociology of knowledge of interdisciplinarity with a focus on etiology, epistemology, definitions, relationships among and between disciplines, intellectual and institutional locations, and the organization of knowledge. A new, more historical approach to the “problem” of interdisciplinarity is proposed.
I first met Michael Katz on a clear, cool autumn afternoon in 1970. I was an uncertain first-year graduate student at the University of Toronto intending to complete a doctorate in British history ...with a project on antisocialism. Feeling confused, anxious, and unsatisfied by my courses, I began to share my concerns with fellow students. One of them, who became a lifelong friend (and editor), suggested that I contact that “young professor up the street” in history of education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education who worked in the new social history. Having read Thernstrom, Tilly, E. P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm, Barrington Moore, and so forth, in a senior honors seminar, I drew up my courage and went to meet Michael.
The Literacy Myth at Thirty Graff, Harvey J.
Journal of social history,
03/2010, Letnik:
43, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This article reviews the thirty year history of The Literacy Myth: Literacy and Social Structure in the Nineteenth-Century City (1979). I reflect on The Literacy Myth and the critical concept of "the ...literacy myth" that it proposed on the occasion of the book's thirtieth anniversary, a special and also a sobering moment. On the one hand, I speak to its broad influence in a number of fields of study; I also consider some of the criticisms encountered. On the other hand, I discuss what I think are its principal weaknesses and limits. The success of The Literacy Myth may be determined at least in part by the extent to which it stimulates new research and thinking that begin to supplant it. After considering the relevance and value of its general arguments for both persisting and newer questions and issues, I reframe my conclusions about social myths and in particular "the literacy myth."
This study investigates the global response of the midlatitude atmospheric circulation to 1.5 and 2.0 °C of warming using the HAPPI (Half a degree Additional warming, Prognosis and Projected Impacts) ...ensemble, with a focus on the winter season. Characterising and understanding this response is critical for accurately assessing the near-term regional impacts of climate change and the benefits of limiting warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, as advocated by the Paris Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The HAPPI experimental design allows an assessment of uncertainty in the circulation response due to model dependence and internal variability. Internal variability is found to dominate the multi-model mean response of the jet streams, storm tracks, and stationary waves across most of the midlatitudes; larger signals in these features are mostly consistent with those seen in more strongly forced warming scenarios. Signals that emerge in the 1.5 °C experiment are a weakening of storm activity over North America, an inland shift of the North American stationary ridge, an equatorward shift of the North Pacific jet exit, and an equatorward intensification of the South Pacific jet. Signals that emerge under an additional 0.5 °C of warming include a poleward shift of the North Atlantic jet exit, an eastward extension of the North Atlantic storm track, and an intensification on the flanks of the Southern Hemisphere storm track. Case studies explore the implications of these circulation responses for precipitation impacts in the Mediterranean, in western Europe, and on the North American west coast, paying particular attention to possible outcomes at the tails of the response distributions. For example, the projected weakening of the Mediterranean storm track emerges in the 2 °C warmer world, with exceptionally dry decades becoming 5 times more likely.
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