Erasing Boundaries

Last Friday, several students sat over lunch at the Center for European Studies. We talked animatedly with historians, political scientists, and sociologists. Across the table from where we sat, a young biologist, eager to start his career in genetic research, was engaged in a lively discussion with an economic historian. In recent years, the term “interdisciplinary” has been ever more bandied about, yet suddenly it seemed that our dynamic little gathering was somehow an expression of the ideal of academic cross-pollination.

“Interdisciplinarity” is in many ways an inflated term. It has been bombarding the ears of undergraduates since last year’s report on the Harvard College Curricular Review, which emphasized fewer concentration requirements for students and more opportunity to explore different areas. As one of few schools requiring a concentration choice at the end of freshman year, Harvard has always emphasized specialized study over general academic work.

Harvard does harbor a minority of distinctly interdisciplinary concentrations, but these programs are not run by tenured, departmental faculty members. Rather, they are the province of graduate students and young academics. By contrast, the curricular review seeks to make general the connections between diverse disciplines. This would mean encouraging professors to create courses that draw on a variety of academic traditions and to guide their students to write senior theses that refuse to conform to one category of scholarship. Yet it seems clear that this cannot happen if professors themselves do not start to think more flexibly about what it means to be trained in a special field. As long as there is limited faculty interest in cross-disciplinary work, the ideals of the curricular review will remain nebulous and also, perhaps, rhetorical.

For many of us students, venturing beyond our department and exploring the connections between our area of study and another is a daunting task. By junior year, with a bit of pluck and brass, most of us have made a few alliances with faculty members. But it is with rare exception that students take seminar-style courses outside our concentrations and make closer connections with members of the senior faculty not in our department. Thus, in the classroom at least, we do not encounter many voices from outside our field.

If contact with faculty can be achieved only by persisting energetically within a concentration—at the expense of interdisciplinary breadth—then this indicates another serious shortcoming that the curricular review has only been able to address tangentially. And even within one’s own concentration, contact with senior faculty is rare and not as frequent as one might hope. When it occurs, exchanges are often marked by formality and the seeming need, on part of the student, to impress the professor. Some faculty members, such as Kemper Professor of History James T. Kloppenberg, complain that students only come to speak to them with something clever to say, and never simply for clarification or to ask for help.

Some of us have found a space on campus where we can explore our inter-disciplinary interests and engage in meaningful encounters with senior faculty. The Center for European Studies is one of the few centers at Harvard devoted to interdisciplinary scholarly pursuits. A walk through the halls of 27 Kirkland takes one past the offices of sociologists, political scientists, philosophers, and historians working in the realm of culture, politics, society, and economics.

Perhaps taking a page from the process of integration in Europe, which has begun to question national boundaries and is attempting to articulate the ways in which cross-national exchanges can take place, the scholars at the Center for European Studies are open-minded individuals who gain excitement from sharing each other’s research, even when it concerns such disparate fields as literary culture and economic history, and areas from Scandinavia to the Balkans. For students, the Center is a vibrant space where with casual ease we can come in contact with faculty members. At events such as the Center’s Friday lunches, undergraduates quite literally rub shoulders with some of the foremost scholars of, among other things, Paris in the 19th century, the history of intermarriage between royal families, or the intellectual dimensions of the Weimar Republic. Even when popular faculty members are on leave, they can often be spotted at the Center. For instance, Tisch Professor of History Niall Ferguson is not teaching a class for undergraduates this semester, but, lo, you can bump into him in the Center’s lovely courtyard.

Tomorrow, the Center for European Studies is going all out in its attempt to overcome the disciplinary and personal boundaries that characterize Harvard. Faculty members and undergraduates have come together to organize a day of encounters centered on French art, literature, music, philosophy, history and politics. Under the heading of “French Kiss,” professors have prepared to meet students over meals, to lead them through the Fogg Art Museum, and to discuss the news of the week and controversial topics in French culture. Big names such as Professor of History of Art and Architecture Henri Zerner and Buttenwieser University Professor Stanley Hoffmann, who may seem far removed from humble undergraduate student life, in fact will be available to personally interact with students. In the evening, student talent will be on show with a lively poetry reading as well as a performance of French singing and musical talent. We hope you can join us, if not today, then at a future Friday lunch, to start overcoming the boundaries between fields, people, and cultures at this university.

Alexander Bevilacqua ’07, a Crimson editorial editor, is a history concentrator in Leverett House. Sophie L. Gonick ’05, a Crimson editorial editor, is a history concentrator in Winthrop House. Both are members of the Undergraduate Board of the Center for European Studies.