Interdisciplinarity should also make us humble and modest. (Nervous laughter from these academics.) Although scholars who work across disciplines at first seem heroic as those brave people who bridge the gap and have interesting insights because they boldly move between areas, it is more true that once you get in these conversations you find how much you really don’t know. You quickly find out other people know so much more than you do!
Even when we find ourselves among scholars who think of us as quite different because of the broadness of our engagement, we must recognize that interdisciplinary scholars are often forced to “cherry-pick” arguments from other disciplines. Although we may come to know some things here and there, we should be warned that this does not make us arbiters or brokers between disciplines.
Overall, Duncan emphasized the importance of engagement with narrative structure and content -- including actively drawing on insights from artists, writers, and visual cultures.
Duncan described her exposure to novelist Zora Neal Thurston and is now able to incorporate humanistic insights utilizing aesthetic sensibilities. Such appreciation not only sophisticates and enlivens her thinking but also counters the routine approach to human beings she sees in social scientists who view human beings as ahistorical, individual agents.
Finally, David Hall from the Harvard Divinity School revealed that social historians with sociological views exist in Britain, but not in the United States.
Curiously, once American historians start down the path of meaning and uncovering meaning, their work is not connected to sociological concepts but rather anthropology and literary studies. Why is that? Hall speculates that perhaps sociology got set aside in the “cultural turn” but still finds it odd since Continental and British historians certainly engage sociology.
I may add my own speculation as to the failure of American religious historians to more fully draw on sociological insights. Stay tuned...
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