sts 903 graduate seminar - spring 2010 …...week 4 - professions, roles and identity required...

QUICK LINKS

Optional Readings Discussion Weblog

(http://interdisciplinarityseminar.blogspot.com/)

Readings as PDFsHoltz Center for STS

(http://www.sts.wisc.edu/)

UW-Madison (http://www.wisc.edu/)

WHAT IS INTERDISCIPLINARITY?

“As analysts of knowledgeproduction and as citizens of

the university, it seemscrucial that we understandhow knowledge production

practices are changing, whatfactors are prompting these

interdisciplinarityseminar: FrontPage

STS 903 Graduate Seminar - Spring 2010

Interdisciplinarity in the Modern Research University

What is “interdisciplinary” research and why does it matter? Doesinterdisciplinary research demand that individual scholars be trained inmultiple specializations? Can interdisciplinary research be performed byteams of specialists using technological tools for working across time andspace? How do institutional norms, physical spaces, and political-economic structures of power and opportunity affect interdisciplinaryresearch? And how do interdisciplinary practices compare across differentmodes of research, from the natural, physical, and social sciences to thearts and humanities? This graduate seminar, team-taught by four facultyaffiliates of the UW-Madison Holtz Center for Science and TechnologyStudies, explores the many diverse meanings and practices of “interdisciplinary,” “transdisciplinary,” and“multidisciplinary” research in the modern university. Using ideas and readings drawn from history,sociology, public policy, anthropology, education, and communication studies, this seminar itself will serveas an example of interdisciplinary practice.

Organization

In Spring 2010 this course meets once each week, from2:30pm-5pm on Tuesdays, in 116 Ingraham Hall. Each weeka different faculty member takes the lead in terms ofdiscussion and readings, although all four faculty membersplan to attend each seminar session. Students will work in collaborative, interdisciplinary groupsto produce a final review, policy, or research paper on interdisciplinarity in a way that is appropriate anduseful to their own graduate research program.

Instructors

Greg Downey is a Professor in the School ofJournalism & Mass Communication (where he iscurrently Director) and in the School of Library& Information Studies. He studies the history andgeography of information and communication

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changes, what forces areinhibiting them, and whether

moves to reorient universityknowledge production is

providing the payoffssupporters of

interdisciplinarity suggest itis. There seems little

agreement on what it meansto do interdisciplinary

research and little clearevidence of the value added

by engaging in such scholarlypractices.”

— Daniel Kleinman

WIKIPEDIA ENTRY ON

INTERDISCIPLINARITY(http://en.wikipedia.org

/wiki/Interdisciplinarity)

"An interdisciplinary fieldor multidisciplinary field

is a field of study that crossestraditional boundaries

between academic disciplinesor schools of thought, as new

needs and professions haveemerged." [2009-12-22]

technology and labor.

Noah Feinstein is an Assistant Professor,Department of Curriculum & Instruction. Hisresearch interests include science education and theboundary between the private and the public.

Linda Hogle is an Associate Professor, Departmentsof Medical History & Bioethics and Anthropology. Her research interests include: social, ethical andpolicy issues in transnational medical technologyinnovation and medical practice, particularlyregarding regenerative medicine, biomedical

engineering and medical device design; transnationalinfrastructures in stem cell research; and the European Union &North America.

Daniel Kleinman is Professor and Chair, Department of Community & EnvironmentalSociology, and Director, Holtz Center for Science & Technology Studies. His research interestsinclude: commercialization of the university and the organization of the knowledge economy;democracy and expertise; and agricultural biotechnology policy.

Readings

Each week students will be expected to complete several article-length readings. We recommend that you print these out, markthem up as you read them, and take notes summarizing their keyclaims and questions. In a seminar like this one, where bothstudents and faculty come to the table with different areas ofexperience and expertise, the readings provide a crucial shared basisof understanding for productive seminar discussion. Each student should come prepared to discuss each of the readings. Being able to concisely articulate the topic and thesis of eachreading is a good first step. Being aware of the theoreticalframework and methodological approach of each reading helps aswell. Another strategy to help open up discussion of a reading is totry to identify a single question that the article raises for you, andhow you might begin to answer that question. Or you might simply bring to class your vote for the "MostImportant Sentence" (MIS) of the article (and why). Both required and optional readings can be found in PDF format here.

Evaluation

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Students will be evaluated an the following criteria:

attendance, preparation, and participation in discussion section: 30%written preparation of reactions to each week's readings and assistance in leading in discussion: 20%final group project on interdisciplinarity, including both presentation and write-up: 50%

Weblog

(http://interdisciplinarityseminar.blogspot.com/) Besides this wiki space, we have setup a course weblog (http://interdisciplinarityseminar.blogspot.com/) for ongoingdiscussion and news. You will be invited to the weblog by one of the courseinstructors. Each week one student will be assigned to each reading as a discussion leader for that text. The discussionleader has a special responsibility: Post a concise summary of the reading, and a few leading questions, toour course discussion weblog. Each discussion leader must post this 24 hours before our section meets, soother students (and faculty) can read and reply to the summary.

Syllabus

Part I - The problem of interdisciplinarity

The first third of class is devoted to the idea of interdisciplinarity. We will read and discuss foundationalwork as well as contemporary research on interdisciplinarity. The goal in this portion of the class is not toexhaust the literature on interdisciplinarity (or transdisciplinarity, and multidisciplinarity ...) but to get ageneral sense of (a) how the idea of interdisciplinarity has been framed through work in several differentresearch traditions (b) what kind of questions keep coming up in projects that claim interdisciplinarity astheir method and/or goal.

Tuesday Jan 19 2010 (Kleinman)

Week 1 - The nature of scientific knowledge and scientific disciplines

Required readings (online here)

Timothy Lenoir. 1993. “The Discipline of Nature and the Nature of Disciplines.” Pages 70-102 inEllen Messer-Davidow, David R. Shumway, and David J. Sylvan (eds.), Knowledges: Historical andCritical Studies in Disciplinarity. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press.

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Robert E. Kohler. 1982. From Medical Chemistry to Biochemistry: The Making of a BiomedicalDiscipline. New York: Cambridge University Press. “Introduction: On Disciplinary History,” pp. 1-8.

Schwab, J. J. (1978). Science, Curriculum and Liberal Education. Chicago: University of ChicagoPress. (pp 229-274)

For more, see the optional readings.

Tuesday Jan 26 2010 (Hogle)

Week 2 - The problem of interdisciplinarity

Required readings

Jacobs, and Scott Frickel. 2009. Interdisicplinarity: a Critical Assessment Ann Rev of Sociology35:43-65Schmidt, Jan. 2007. Knowledge politics of interdisciplinarity: Specifying the type of interdisciplinarityin the NSF's NBIC scenario. Innovation 20(4):1469-8412Gibbons, M, C, Limoges, H Nowotny, S Schwartzman, P Scott & M Trow. 1994. Ch 1 Introductionp1-16 in The New Production of Knowledge: the Dynamics of Science and Research in ContemporarySocieties. Sage Publications


Tuesday Feb 02 2010 (Feinstein)

Week 3 - The challenge of collaboration in interdisciplinary research

Required readings

Wenger, Etienne. Communities of Practice and Social Learning SystemsOrganization 2000; 7; 225Shrum, Wesley, Joel Genuth & Ivan Chompalov . 2007. Structures of Scientific Collaboration. MITPress (EXCERPT)

Carayol, Nicolas; Thuc Uyen Nguyen Thi. 2005. Why do academic scientists engage ininterdisciplinary research? Research Evaluation (http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/beech/rev) ,Volume 14, Number 1, pp. 70-79.Schneiberg, Marc and Elisabeth Clemens 2006. The typical tools for the job: research strategies ininstitutional analysis. Sociological Theroy 24:3 195-


Tuesday Feb 09 2010 (Kleinman)

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Week 4 - Professions, Roles and Identity

Required readings

Abbott, Andrew. (1988). The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor.Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Matsutake worlds research group. 2009. "A new form of collaboration in cultural anthropology," AmEthnologist 36(2) 380-403 (collaborative team-based research)


Tuesday Feb 16 2010 (Downey)

Week 5 - Spaces and places for interdisciplinarity

Required readings (in chronological order; online here)

David Allison, “Places for Research,” International Science and Technology 1:9 (1962), 20-31 (~10pages). PDFPeter Galison, "Three Laboratories," Social Research 64:3 (1997). PDFThomas Gieryn, “Biotechnology’s Private Parts (and Some Public Ones),” in Crosbie Smith and JonAgar, eds., Making Space for Science: Territorial Themes in the Shaping of Knowledge (New York:Palgrave Macmillan, 1998), 281–312 (~30 pages). PDFRobert Venturi, "Thoughts on the architecture of the scientific workplace: Community, change, andcontinuity," in Peter Galison and Emily Thompson, ed., The Architecture of Science (Cambridge, MA:MIT Press, 1999), 385-398. PDFStuart Leslie, “‘A Different Kind of Beauty’: Scientific and Architectural Style in I.M. Pei’s MesaLaboratory and Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute,” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 38:1 (Spring2008), 173-221 (~50 pages). PDF


Part II - Interdisciplinarity cases and issues in depth

The second third of the class will be devoted to particulare case studies and issues of interdisciplinarity. We will hear talks andhold discussions with a handful of experts in university reasearch, to try to understand how they define, value, and measure theevolving practice of interdisciplinarity in the modern research university.

Porter, AL, Roessner, JD, Cohen, AS and Perreault, M. 2006. Interdisciplinary research: meaning,metrics and nurture. Research Evaluation, 15(3): 187-195.

Tues Feb 23 2010 (Hogle)

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Week 6 - Guest Speaker: Diana Rhoten (http://www.ssrc.org/staff/rhoten-diana-r/)

Diana Rhoten is director of the Knowledge Institutions program and the Digital Media and Learning project at theSocial Science Research Council. With funding from the MacArthur Foundation, Rhoten is leading the LearningNetworks project in New York City, which uses a design-driven methodology to help institutions developcollaborative and interactive ways of crafting digital media and learning activities. In addition to her role at theCouncil, Rhoten also spent the last two years as the founding program director of the Virtual Organizations andthe CyberLearning programs in the Office of Cyberinfrastructure at the National Science Foundation.

Tues Mar 02 2010 (Feinstein)

Week 7 -

First hour -Second hour - Guest speaker TBA

Tues Mar 09 2010 (Downey)

Week 8 - Guest speaker: Tracey Holloway

Tracey Holloway is the Director of the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment(SAGE), a cross-disciplinary research center based in the Nelson Institute for EnvironmentalStudies (http://www.nelson.wisc.edu/) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison(http://www.wisc.edu/) . She is also the associate director of the Wisconsin BioenergyInitiative. Holloway's research examines air pollution chemistry and transport at regional andglobal scales, including links between air quality and climate, energy, land use, health, andpublic policy.

Tues Mar 16 2010 (Kleinman)

Week 9 - Guest speaker: John Wiley (http://www.discovery.wisc.edu/wisconsin/story.cmsx?sid=15339)

Outgoing UW-Madison Chancellor John D. Wiley has been named the new interim director of the WisconsinInstitute for Discovery (http://www.discovery.wisc.edu/about/proposal-accepted.php) (WID), the public half ofthe new research center that promises to be a model of interdisciplinary science and public-private collaboration. Wiley's appointment, effective Nov. 1, 2008, was announced by UW-Madison Graduate School Dean MartinCadwallader. In addition to the 25 percent appointment as interim WID director, Wiley will apply hisconsiderable knowledge and experience in higher education as a professor in the Department of EducationalLeadership and Policy Analysis (http://www.education.wisc.edu/elpa/) (ELPA) and at the Robert M. La FolletteSchool of Public Affairs (http://www.lafollette.wisc.edu/) . In addition, he will have a zero-dollar appointment assenior scholar at The Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Post-secondary Education(http://www.wiscape.wisc.edu/) (WISCAPE).

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POTENTIAL PROJECT TOPICS

Cluster hiresWisconsin Energy Institute /

WBI / GLBRCCenter for Research on the

HumanitiesWhat is Human initiative

The Holtz Center (heh)The Nelson Institute

The proposed EnvironmentalStudies major

The Waizman CenterNanoscale Center

"Collisions" dinners

Guest speaker: Sangtae "Sang" Kim (http://www.discovery.wisc.edu/home/morgridge/about-us/leadership/sang-kim/sang-kim-home.cmsx)

Sangtae “Sang” Kim was appointed executive director of the new, private not-for-profit Morgridge Institute forResearch in September 2008. In this position, he is building a world-class interdisciplinary biomedical researchorganization from the ground up. Located on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, it is intended tobecome the Midwest’s premier, private medical research institute. Prior to his appointment at the MorgridgeInstitute, he was the Donald W. Feddersen Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering and DistinguishedProfessor of Chemical Engineering at Purdue University. His past work experience includes serving the NationalScience Foundation as director of the division of shared cyberinfrastructure, as well as six years of executiveindustry experience gained at Lilly Research Laboratories, Pfizer Global Research and Development andParke-Davis Pharmaceutical Research.

Tues Mar 23 2010 (Hogle)

Week 10 - Guest speaker: Laura Heisler

Laura Heisler is Director of Programming, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. Heislerreceived her Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from UW-Madison and has 10 yearsexperience working as a researcher and scientific writer in the biotechnology industry. Shecurrently directs WARF's Strategic Technology Enhancement Program to accelerate technologytransfer in key areas. She also develops, implements and manages programs for the TownCenter of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.

Tues Mar 30 2010

Week 11 - NO CLASS FOR SPRING BREAK

Part III - Interdisciplinarity case studies

This last third of class will be devoted to project work:interdisciplinary collaboration around interdisciplinary topics. Foreach of the first three or four weeks (depending on the number ofgroups) one of the project groups will bring in and present rich ortroublesome data from their ongoing research project. The firsthour of class will be devoted to discussion of these data, and ofrelated issues arising in other projects. The second hour will bedevoted to discussion of readings chosen by course faculty inresponse to emerging conceptual and methodological challenges inproject work.

Tues Apr 06 2010 (Feinstein)

Week 12 - Group 1 and 2 - research challenges

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Tues Apr 13 2010 (Downey)

Week 13 - Group 3 and 4 - research challenges

Tues Apr 20 2010 (Kleinman)

Week 14 - Pulling a study together

Tues Apr 27 2010 (Feinstein)

Week 15 - Group presentations 1 and 2

Tues May 04 2010 (Hogle)

Week 16 - Group presentations 3 and 4

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sts 903 graduate seminar - spring 2010 …...week 4 - professions, roles and identity required...

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