Geneseo grants its students the unique opportunity to embark on an interdisciplinary journey fostered by the college’s general education requirements, which encourage students to take a variety of courses outside their major discipline. Through this requirement, I have taken a wide range of classes that span the disciplines of dance, biology, philosophy, and math. Despite indulging in this breadth of classes, I never considered just how deeply these disciplines were connected prior to taking English 203. One of the course’s required texts, Joe Moran’s Interdisciplinarity, exposed me to the connections between disciplines, specifically, science and literature. Understanding the relationships between science and literature is of great importance to me since I am a double major in physics and English.
However, my understanding of the relationships between disciplines was insufficient, even after reading Moran’s work. In order to fully understand interdisciplinarity and its inherent value, I first had to postulate my own connections. English 203’s inclusion of the blogging project allowed me to do just this. I believe that my ability to find connections between disciplines, my own life, and the lives of others is the greatest success I accomplished through the blogging project. The practice of thinking across disciplines has deepened my thought process on the whole and has also represented a source of personal enjoyment and fulfillment for me.
My very first blog post dealt with my interest in the interdisciplinary themes that English 203’s syllabus promised would be present throughout the semester. Though my title was a bit corny and the post itself was laden with both grammatical and systematic flaws, I believe that the post laid the foundation for my following entries. It established my motivation for taking this course and the physics background I hailed from. Interestingly, in my first blog post, I maintain that “physics and English may not have very much in common” and further state that the tension between these supposedly dissimilar subjects will fuel later blog posts.
However, as the semester continued, I discovered that English and physics are not the fantastic rivals I initially perceived them to be. In fact, through reading Percival Everett’s works, particularly, I am Not Sidney Poitier, I began to see the deep, genuine connections between Everett’s literature and physics, specifically, Quantum physics. I unraveled my speculative association between the two in my blog post, “Many Worlds, Many Meanings.” I found that Not Sidney’s “death” reminded me of an intricate, eerie theory of Quantum physics: Quantum Immortality. Arriving at this connection was difficult, it required some headache-inducing thinking, but eventually, I discovered a stable connection between Not-Sidney’s ambiguous fate and the theory.
This represented the first time I practiced interdisciplinarity myself. Some might argue that the connection I observed was contrived since my perception of the relationship was not spontaneous or easy to envision. Some might say that any kind of connection can be established if one puts enough thought into the process. However, I do not believe that extensive thinking cheapens the connections one perceives, rather, it deepens them.
This process opened my eyes to yet another connection between science and literature. I expressed this relationship in a later blog post that dealt with scientists’ penchants for assigning definitions to the natural world. Affluent scientific minds, such as Francis Bacon, employed metaphors and other elements of figurative language to influence people’s perceptions of their environments. Exploring this relationship between the conventions of literature, such as figurative language, and science allowed me to understand the immense consequences of this unexpected yet powerful connection. Additionally, many of my earlier blog posts, though not necessarily interdisciplinary, postulate the existence of connections between Everett’s works and conventions of literature, such as definitions and terms used in The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms. This process still held great value for me, as it deepened my understanding of both the text and terms I was relating.
Through uncovering the relationships between science and literature I became more adept at perceiving connections between literature and other disciplines, such as music, history, and art. I fully exercised this ability in my final blog post, where I connected history and art to literature, specifically Everett’s novel, I am Not Sidney Poitier. Written at the end of the semester, this blog post’s creation rested on my ability to readily view relationships between disciplines. One might argue that the relationships between literature and disciplines such as music, history, and art should appear obvious since these disciplines often interact and inform each other. However, relating aspects of each discipline to a particular work of literature presents a worthy challenge. This challenge can be lessened through the implementation of a specific lens or angle that can at once cement connections and reveal central themes within the disciplines or works being related.
Moreover, seeking and fortifying connections allowed me to make more solid connections between the works read in class and my own life. I find the skill of developing connections to be extremely important, for while it is not mandatory that all literature relates to one’s individual experiences, it is crucial that one exercise empathy when reading and attempt to relate it to their own experiences or the experiences of others. For example, in a blog post, I contrasted Not Sidney’s physical growth with the growth my peers and I underwent as thinkers and writers. Furthermore, one must be willing to sense and accept the multiple meanings that literature has the potential to convey.
Unfortunately, my first blog post neglected this skill. While it related back to my own life, the relationship was rather shallow and was not founded on textual evidence. I connected my status as a double-major to the interdisciplinary nature of the class, without considering any of the class materials. In doing so, I discredited not only myself but also literary studies. I am more than a double-major, I am a person with multi-faceted interests and ever-changing ideas, just as literature is an entity with multiple meanings and applications that deserve to be explored. Further blogging and the practice of drawing connections between disciplines allowed me to excavate how the literature read in class related to my own life and ideas. Through reading the blogs of my peers, I was privy to aspects of their lives and to their ideas, as well. Thus, the blogging project heightened my sense of empathy and aided me in my understanding of the literature read in class, as well as in my understanding of my peers.
These ends were met through my ambitious attempts to locate instances in my life and relate them to Everett’s works. For instance, I managed to find a connection between a physics lab I taught this semester and Everett’s I am Not Sidney Poitier, in that both were and are laden with miscommunication. This observation urged me to press deeper into my own life in search of further connections and allowed me to realize the uniqueness of my own life in relation to others’. Additionally, familiarizing myself with this connection exposed me to the miracle represented by my capability of understanding and being understood by others, despite the miscommunications birthed by the latent disparity in individuals’ experiences.
In a blog post entitled, “Many Worlds, Many Meanings,” I flesh out relationships not only between Quantum physics and I am Not Sidney Poitier but between the aforementioned entities and my own life, as well. In my discussion of the many worlds theory of Quantum physics, I argue that a work of literature can transport individuals into diverse worlds since each individual is capable of interpreting the meaning of a particular work of literature differently. This effect is produced by the unique experiences each individual undergoes.
I arrived at this connection through my observations during small group discussions where I recognized that each member of the group posited different yet plausible interpretations of the assigned reading. I saw that each unique interpretation and perceived meaning is fueled by the distinctive life experiences of an individual. This observation deepened the empathy I had for my peers and both inspired and informed several of my blog posts. However, I only achieved this realization after practicing interdisciplinarity and visualizing how disciplines impact one’s understanding of another discipline and its products. I recognized that the same could be said of people, in that one’s unique experiences will affect one’s interpretation of the literature one consumes.
As a result of the blogging project, I developed prospective answers regarding how and why one should read based on my personal experience. I believe that one should read in an open-minded fashion wherein one can explore, conceive, and acknowledge connections between literary studies and other disciplines. The ability to envisage connections is important, as the lens one uses to cement relationships can expose themes in each related entity. These themes may speak to one’s own life or the human condition, on the whole, and may even provide insight as to how each can be bettered. Furthermore, one should read in order to exercise not only one’s ability to connect disciplines but to train one’s empathetic capabilities, as well. One reads to connect to one’s contemporaries, especially those unlike oneself. Overall, one reads so that one may come to better understand the world around oneself and to know that each aspect of one’s environment is multifaceted in its meaning, function, and consequences.