Academic Divisions

August 30, 2006

A characteristic of the university is its division into separate departments. There are the inevitable English, French, History, Philosophy, Religion, Art History, Anthropology, and Psychology departments. The impression from looking at the departmental roster of a university is that scholars fall into definite academic slots. In practice the divisions are not so neat. At Emory the number of scholars who worked on Classics was greater than the Classics department, branching out to include some in Art History, History, Philosophy, and even the Institute of Liberal Arts (ILA). Likewise, scholars working on issues concerning the Middle East are also often scattered among various departments, from Political Science to Religion (like me!). They may not sit together in departmental meetings, but they find common cause in other ways (cross-listed courses, speakers, etc.).

For all the cross-pollination, departments maintain an individual personality. I recall sitting in a class on Classical philosophy and hearing students bring up ideas of the free-will in Kant or Descartes. Plato could also be important in a Religion or literary context.. but each department brings its own peculiar theoretical issues to bear on the texts. As I sat in the course on Classical philosophy I felt somewhat alienated from my lack of real interest in the department's core issues. More than that, it seemed that the philosophy department had its own canon of important textual touchstones. The Plato of the philosophy scholar is embedded within a different canon than the Plato of the Religion scholar.. and both are different than the Plato of a literary scholar. It is a law of the scholarly nature that everyone thinks that their canon is the only real way to approach a writer or issue. It takes something of a meta-scholarly sensibility to see how different questions are generated by the contexts of various disciplines.

I sometimes search for a more basic division among Humanities scholars. Try this: there are historians and textualists. Everything depends upon someone's approach to primary texts. Are texts an end in themselves.. something to be read and studied for something inherent in themselves? If so, you are a textualist. Or, are texts to be used to answer some other question, such as: why did the Roman Empire fall? or How do you explain the rise of Islam? In this case the primary texts are sources for a larger project. If you fall into this category, you are a historian. Scholars within Philosophy, Religion, and even English departments divide on this point.. the value of texts in themselves or rather as buildings blocks in a further project.

Working on a text such as the Khitat by Maqrizi I am often struck by the preponderance of scholars who want to know something by means of Maqrizi.. some point of Egyptian history or the structural history of a mosque. Much rarer to find someone interested in learning how Maqrizi sees his world and gives structure to it by means of words. But Maqrizi is a canonical historical text.. so I realize I am poaching on the ground of the historians.