The Cross of Interdisciplinarity

Doing interdisciplinary work can be a burden. Now, in CWS at the U of I we're encouraged, in fact, we really can't get by, without doing interdisciplinary work. There's just not enough classes in the English department to make sure we get everything we need. I personally enjoy working in other disciplines: Speech Com, Women's Studies, Art & Design, Cirriculum and Instruction, Library Science. However, as Gail et. al.'s book points out, I'm not the only one suffering from a case of too much interdisciplinarity (and no ability to focus)

Many computers and composition specialists, caught between two worlds, felt an obligation to remain current both in their knowledge of technology and in their understanding of composition studies. (165)

This is definitely a problem for me. I love teaching web design, but in order to do that well, I have to learn Dreamweaver MX and Photoshop thoroughly so I can problem solve for my students, and I have to learn whatever new program is industry standard when it comes out. In other words, I'm always teaching myself new computer programs. I love it, but when do I have time to learn new programs, plus keep up with all the current theory in all of the fields of my interest (which are far too many), plus read back on all the theory I've missed in the last 2000 years before I was born. All this just to become a competent scholar. Boy I wish I was interested in dead people. There's less work to do, and fewer people to argue your claims. These live ones just keep changing and making life more difficult...

Now here's where Pat Sullivan summarizes it all in a moment of pure revelatory genius:

I think that was my learning experience--being interdisciplinary. You have to learn all the languages of the groups that you're dealing with. You have to constantly reframe your project into the questions and interests that each of these groups have. I wasn't very good at doing that when I first started, and I think that my dissertaiton didn't get out to as big as a community because I didn't quite know how to be interdisciplinary--I was learning how to be interdiscplinary. (169)

Pat makes the point that this is why she couldn't get a conference proposal accepted, because she couldn't sell it to the right audience. Oh, I hope that is my only problem! I hope it's not that I'm an incompetent scholar or I really don't know what I'm talking about (because I think I do, and I think it's valuable) but just that I don't know how to talk to my audience. Certainly, I learned how to talk to my students this semester, but I hadn't a clue how to do that last semester. Anyway, we'll see if I can narrow all these disciplines into one dissertation topic, sell it properly to the different disciplinary audiences, and figure out some way to get it published. That will be a big enough feat for me!