Interdisciplinary Lunch Break

With the start of this semester, four new members joined the Research Training Group, adding two paid literary PhDs to the project, which totals the number of literary PhDs to three. An almost unheard amount! Can one call this the literary turn of the RTG?

But jokes aside, after one year at the RTG as a literary PhD, I think it is time to sit down and reflect on what the RTG has taught me about interdisciplinary work.

The term itself feels omnipresent, yet strangely absent within campus life in general. Much like diversity, it is a quality strived for and yet rarely achieved. This at times can generate an almost cynical approach to the subject. On paper everyone will write that they benefit from interdisciplinary work, but that does not mean we know what that actually means. How does this fabled, glamorous interdisciplinary work look like? Are we about to recreate the famous ‘The School of Athens’ painted by Raphael?

The answer is yes, no, maybe, partially, sometimes, …well you see. Neither of us have the interest or self importance to recreate that specific image and school of thought, but you can only spend so much time in the same office spaces and sit together at lunch before disciplinary quirks and subject-specific oddities come up. Sometimes it starts out as a joke. “You German historians sure love Reinhart Koselleck.” “Well, you English literature theorists only care about fiction.” And then after some twists and turns, there is a promise to discuss an important paper at hand. It is not that interdisciplinary work happens through osmosis, but it happens in the most trivial exchange and some times as far away from one’s own project and university workshops.

Simply by listening one learns a lot. You would think the historians are a united front against the literary and sociology PhDs within this RTG, but the discipline is cut by time periods and locations. Each specialization has its own distinct arche- and stereotype. It does not feel as unified as the literary PhDs, who all focus on English language and 21st Century literature.

What all these quips and jokes have actually taught me is that perhaps disciplines are not as different as I believed them to be. No discipline is that special. Our traditions converge. Our problems within a university context are more similar than not. It takes a certain willingness to understand the other and the willingness is there. The upcoming summer school, organized by an interdisciplinary group from within our RTG, wants to look at the methods around Empire with the aim of looking at methods across disciplines. Our workshop on positionality by Professor Sujata Patel also brushed on the problematic history of our disciplines with the impetus to transcend these boundaries.

We are arguing, talking, trying to understand. We fail, we are confronted with our own short-sightedness, at least I am, and we learn something new. How much that will affect our individual projects is up for debate, but that is perhaps not the point of the exercise.

After a year at the RTG, I can say that interdisciplinary work does not feel as light or glamorous as the usage of the term might suggest, similarly to diversity it is a goal, in its positive connotations, and just an advertisement, in its negative connotations, but it is fun, even in its humility. Even when one accidentally mixes up the terms method and methodology in front of the sociologist, opening up yet another debate. In the words of David William Brandt, who never expected to be used in this context I imagine, “It ain’t much, but it’s honest work.” (And, addition by me, by God, it is fun.)