2008 Symposium

Thinking Interdisciplinarity
April 9 - 11, 2008

Wednesday, April 9

4:15 p.m.
Joe Rosenfield '25 Center, Room 101

Robert J. Richards
"Beyond Biology: The Sources of Racial Categories"

8:00 p.m.
Joe Rosenfield '25 Center, Room 101

Ralph Savarese
"The Lobes of Autobiography: Poetry and Autism"

11:00 a.m.
Joe Rosenfield '25 Center, Room 101

Lawrence Grossberg
"Rescuing the Economy from Economists: A Challenge for Interdisciplinarity"

4:15 p.m. (Cancelled)
Joe Rosenfield '25 Center, Room 101

M. Jacqui Alexander
"Interdisciplinarity as Intellectual Biography"

11:00 a.m.
ARH 302

Anna Johnson '07 and Emma Meade '07
"The "Reality" of Sex and Pleasure: Two Interdisciplinary Takes on the Essentialist/Constructionist Debate"

4:15 p.m.
Forum South Lounge

Roundtable Discussion: M. Jacqui Alexander, Larry Grossberg, Robert J. Richards, Ralph Savarese, and other Grinnell faculty.

The Center for the Humanities is pleased to hold its annual symposium from April 9-11 at Grinnell College. Entitled “Thinking Interdisciplinarity,” the symposium will add depth and meaning to a term that is so much in vogue in contemporary higher education. By bringing experts from several fields that are pioneering exemplary models of interdisciplinarity, the symposium offers its audience and participants an opportunity to reflect on the possibilities for teaching, research, and the place of the humanities in intellectual pursuits that defy traditional disciplinary categories. The Symposium welcomes back to campus three of its recent Distinguished Visiting Professors. Robert J. Richards is a renowned authority in the field of the History of Science, specializing in the reception of Charles Darwin’s and Ernst Haeckel’s theories of evolution and natural selection. Lawrence J. Grossberg is a leading scholar of Cultural Studies and a driving force behind serious scholarship on popular culture and its relation to political and economic formations. M. Jacqui Alexander is one of the most important theorists of transnational feminism today, and her work has had a profound impact on feminist, queer, and critical race theories. Joining our scholars from off-campus will be Ralph Savarese, Associate Professor of English at Grinnell College, whose recent book, Reasonable People: A Memoir of Autism and Adoption, has garnered national praise and situated him as a leading voice in the field of Disability Studies.