By Kara Kaufman
History Department

Picture the scenario: I am with my husband at his annual company picnic and he has just introduced me to his manager (aptly called “The Boss”). After many dinner conversations with my husband about The Boss, I know how important this picnic is to him and his career. As The Boss is coming our way to formally greet us on this sunny summer day, my inner dialogue is emphasizing the significance of presenting a good impression; this person does, after all, hold the keys to my husband’s continued employment. With my inner conversation in the background, the audible-to-all conversation continues:

The Boss: Very nice to finally meet you, Kara, I’ve heard many nice things about you. What is it, exactly, that you do?

Me: It is nice to meet you as well. I am a professor at Salem State College.

The Boss: Oh wonderful, what do you teach?

[At this juncture, the conversation will develop depending upon the choices I have made in my professional life up to this moment. Let us pretend that I earned a Ph.D. in History and have a tenure-track position in the History Department at Salem State College.]

Me: I teach history.

The Boss: Do you have a specialty?

Me: Yes, my specialty is in modern American cultural history.

The Boss: How interesting. I like history too. I constantly have the History Channel on and will read anything that deals with the Civil War.

Me (inner dialogue): [Groan] Of course you do.

[Now let us pretend that I am just about to receive my Ph.D. in Social Sciences from a European institution and am an adjunct professor in the History Department, but will be on the job-hunt soon for a tenure-track professorship in an interdisciplinary department like Cultural Studies, for instance.]

Me: I teach history.

The Boss: Do you have a specialty?

Me (inner dialogue): Don’t panic, but do remember that he really isn’t in this for a lengthy, detailed conversation about your scholarly interests. Don’t forget, this is The Boss.

Me: Um, well, yes, but it’s not a specialty in History per se.

The Boss: Oh, then what is it?

Me: Um, er, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly. I am finishing my dissertation on the concept of the Self from a postmodern, socially-constructed perspective. Looking at how conversations within and with others shape the concept of the Self through transformative dialogue…

[pause]

Me (inner dialogue): Oh crap.

The Boss: Oh, uh huh, I see…well, I must greet my other guests. Perhaps we can continue this conversation another time.

Me: [in practically a whisper] Sure, of course, no problem.

The latter scenario has happened to me more often than I can recall in various social situations. I will soon receive my Ph.D. in Social Sciences from Tilburg University in The Netherlands. I have taught World History for Salem State College’s History Department since 2002. My dissertation is on the concept of the Self, and I will be searching for a job in an interdisciplinary department. With this background, there just seems to be no easy answer to the question posed by The Boss, “What do you do?”

Conversations like these have led me to ask, “Why do people expect me to have a succinct answer to the question, ‘What do you do?’ What is behind this expectation?” They are anticipating an answer such as, “I am an engineer, a psychologist, a firefighter, a nurse, a computer programmer.” However, I do not fit into any neat category, and, as demonstrated above, that can make for an awkward social situation. After pondering and investigating this question, I suggest that the answer has to do, in part, with how the Academy is structured.

The Academy seems to be structured like an archipelago—a string of solitary islands that together make up a whole. The distinct islands are the various academic departments, like History, for example. The islands, or departments, each have their own culture, language, and revered body of knowledge. Rarely do the islands connect with other islands. Instead, the islands at times act like competitors and close their boundaries to outside influence.

Each island is charged with constructing knowledge based upon its own family recipe that has been passed down from generation to generation. The original recipe for each family might change ever-so-slightly over time, but its core ingredients remain indispensable to the integrity of the recipe. Since each island has its own family recipe, if you live on History Island your recipe to construct knowledge will look different than if you lived on Psychology Island.

The recipe to construct knowledge is the essence to each island’s identity; without adherence to the strict ingredients, History would not look like History any longer. However, the recipe does not put itself together. The recipe is only a road map of ingredients necessary for knowledge in a particular form. A human being is necessary for that form to come to life. The human is the one who is in charge; she makes the decisions about which ingredient goes into the batter, not to mention how much of it. The humans on any given island take on the identity associated with the island. On History Island, the humans using History’s family recipe are known as Historians, on Psychology Island, the humans are known as Psychologists, on Sociology Island, they are Sociologists and so on.

The people living on this archipelago sometimes take holidays to visit other islands in the archipelago. They’ll talk with the different islands’ residents and perhaps even share stories about their specific family recipes. When the Psychologist returns from a visit to Anthropology Island, she is bringing with her the conversations with the Anthropologists. Since she does not have the ability to reach into the controls of her brain and shut off the valve labeled ‘past conversations with Anthropologists,’ she is forever transformed.

As she returns to the Psychology recipe her family has used from past generations, she inadvertently infuses the knowledge created from that traditional recipe with the information swirling around in herself from her visit to Anthropology Island. She cannot help it; she has been transformed by her visit, even if the transformation is minute. As she continues to vacation on other islands in the archipelago, she begins to notice that the knowledge forms she creates after the visits just aren’t the same as they used to be before she started traveling. She wonders why this is happening and it dawns on her that her creations are infused with sprinkles of other ingredients from other families’ recipes.

With this awareness, she realizes that she has to make a crucial decision: Should she purposefully try to stop herself from adding (or subtracting) from her tried and true recipe, or should she now consciously alter the recipe as she goes along? Her decision is not an easy one because some of her peers on Psychology Island are worried. They have started to notice that she does not necessarily fit in with the rest of the inhabitants; her knowledge forms are warping out of shape. Some of the Psychology Island residents have discussed ways of isolating her so that she will not infect the whole island, and she has overheard conversations regarding the desire to keep the old family recipe ‘pure.’ Yet, there are completely different conversations on the island that have indicated that what she has been doing has improved upon the old recipe, and that she should lead the way and teach others how to play with the ingredients.

When it really comes down to it, she already made her decision the first time she allowed the Anthropology spice to make its way into the Psychology family recipe. The real decision is whether to stay on Psychology Island and work with the inhabitants, respecting and balancing the two opposing sides’ views of the original recipe, or move to an island that was discovered fairly recently called Interdisciplinary Island. She has heard stories about this new island. Not many people reside on it, but those who are there are placing all of their family recipes on the kitchen table and mixing and matching and adding and subtracting in infinite ways, creating all kinds of new forms. If she decides to move to Interdisciplinary Island she thinks that her identity will become murky. Who will she be? She is used to being a Psychologist. There is no such person as an Interdisciplinarian. In fact, now that she thinks about it, the residents of that island all have different identities and names that indicate what forms of knowledge they create, rather than who they are: Women’s Studies, Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, American Studies, Native American Studies, African American Studies, the list is endless. If she stays on Psychology Island, she has a firm hold not only on the forms of knowledge she creates, but on her personal identity because she can decisively say that she is a Psychologist. Yet, as she has come to realize, she would have to work at stopping herself from integrating the ingredients from the other islands if she wants to choose an identity with clear boundaries. She is not sure what she’ll do, but at least there are choices.

The woman on Psychology Island and I have a lot in common. We both feel comfortable with integrating various family recipes, and do not want to reign ourselves in to fit a traditional mold when creatively mixing ingredients. However, we also feel uncomfortable because we do not have a professional or personal identity that can be neatly packaged in one sentence like, I am a Psychologist. That one statement—I am a Psychologist—tells your conversational partner what you do, and it implies who you are because of the use of the verb ‘to be.’ There is no label that exactly fits who I am and/or what I do, thus I could not answer The Boss succinctly during an important dialogue that day at the picnic. Even though my choice to be on Interdisciplinary Island sometimes makes for awkward socializing with people from traditional islands, I am grateful that I have a cohort of colleagues, friends and family who share my love for messing with old family recipes.

This article is part of ASpect’s December 2009 issue on interdisciplinarity.