The increasing prevalence of interdisciplinary scholarship in the humanities and social sciences has given rise to spirited and at times territorial disputes over the proper application of theories and methods across disciplinary boundaries. Such debates have often focused on the nature and uses of evidence in interdisciplinary research. How do theoretical concerns shape the search for evidence? What are the effects of method on evidence? Who evaluates the validity of evidence, and how do disputes over theory inform those judgments? Considering specific pathbreaking works and the controversies they have engendered, this seminar will explore the relationship between theory, method, and evidence as a means of assessing the promise and problems associated with interdisciplinary inquiry. We will focus on disputes concerning evidentiary standards, with particular attention to standpoint theory, the history and sociology of science, the place of psychoanalysis in contemporary film criticism, and postcolonial studies.

Course Requirements

In addition to your perfect attendance and informed participation at weekly meetings, each student will be required to lead the discussion once during the semester. Students leading discussions will outline the central problem or problems in the week’s readings and offer questions to spark discussion among the group. A list of these questions must be e-mailed to Professors Sammond and Keller at least twenty-four hours in advance of the seminar meeting.

Students will also be required to produce a twenty to twenty-five page paper discussing the key problems surrounding theory, method, or evidence in their own research projects. A three-page précis of the project and an annotated bibliography will be due in class on Wednesday, February 27, and the final papers must be turned in (in duplicate) no later than 12 pm on Friday, April 26.

Course Readings

Books are available for purchase at the Washington University Bookstore in Mallinkrodt. Reserve readings (marked with an *) are also required, and can be found in Busch 118.

• Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
• Bruno Latour, The Pasteurization of France.
• Carolyn Allen and Judith A. Howard, eds., Provoking Feminisms.
• Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter, eds., Feminist Epistemologies.
• David Bordwell and Noel Carroll, eds., Post-Theory.
• Patricia Erens, ed., Issues in Feminist Film Criticism.
• Philip Rosen, ed., Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology.
• Edward W. Said, Orientalism.
• Ranajit Guha, ed. A Subaltern Studies Reader, 1986-1995.
• Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge.
• Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities.

Schedule

January 9: Introductory meeting

From the History of Science to Science Studies

January 16: From History to Sociology of Science

Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Robert Merton, “The Normative Structure of Science.”*
Bruno Latour, The Pasteurization of France, selections.
January 23: Science Studies and Situated Knowledges-Feminism and Primatology:

Evelyn Fox Keller, “Feminism and Science,” Signs 7 (3): 589-602.*
Alison Jolly, “The Bad Old Days of Primatology?” in Primate Encounters.*
Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Chapters 1, 2, and 5.*

January 30: Science Wars and Academic Weapons

Allen Sokal, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.” Social Text 46-7 (1996): 217-52 (skim).*
Allen Sokal, “A Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies.” Lingua Franca 6 (1996): 62-64.*
Bruce Robbins and Andrew Ross, “Mystery Science Theater”; and “The Sokal Hoax: A Forum,” Lingua Franca July/August 1996, 54-64.*
Alison Wylie, “Questions of Evidence, Legitimacy, and the (Dis)unity of Science,” American Antiquity 65 (2000): 227-37.*

Feminist Theories of Subjectivity and Experience

February 6: Questioning Objectivity

Lorraine Daston, “Objectivity and the Escape from Perspective.” Configurations.*
Lorraine Code, “Taking Subjectivity into Account.” Feminist Epistemologies.
Helen Longino, “Description and Prescription in Feminist Philosophies of Science.” Feminist Epistemologies.
Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective.” Simians, Cyborgs, and Women.*

February 13: Arguing a Separate Epistemology

Karl Marx, “On The Jewish Question.” The Marx-Engels Reader.*
Wendy Brown, “Rights and Identity in Late Modernity: revisiting the ‘Jewish Question’.” Identities, Politics and Rights.*
Nancy Hartsock, “The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground For A Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism.” Feminism and Methodology.*

February 20: Questioning Subjectivity

Sandra Harding, “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: what is ‘strong objectivity’?” Feminist Epistemologies.
Joan Scott, “Experience.” Feminists Theorize The Political.*
Provoking Feminisms, 9-66.
Catherine MacKinnon, “Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State.” Feminism and Methodology.*

February 27: Problems of Identity and Situated Practices

Joan Scott, “Deconstructing Equality-Versus-Difference: or, the uses of poststructuralist theory for feminism.” Feminist Social Thought.*
Wendy Brown, “Wounded Identities”. States of Injury.*
Provoking Feminisms, 71-134.
Linda Gordon and Joan W. Scott, Reviews and Responses. Signs.*

PROJECT PROSPECTUS AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE IN CLASS

Film Theory and Post-Film Theory

March 13: Psychoanalytic and Semiotic Theory in Film

David Bordwell, “Contemporary Film Studies and the Vicissitudes of Grand Theory.” Post-Theory.
Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Issues in Feminist Film Theory.
Christian Metz, “Some Points in the Semiotics of the Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism.*
Kaja Silverman, “The Subject” and “Suture.” The Subject of Semiotics.*
Mary Ann Doane, “Film and the Masquerade: theorizing the female film spectator.” Issues in Feminist Film Theory.

March 20: Film Theory, Applications and Rebuttals I

Jean-Louis Baudry, “The Apparatus: metapsychological approaches to the impression of reality in the cinema.” Narrative, Apparatus and Ideology.
Teresa de Lauretis, “Through the Looking-Glass” Narrative, Apparatus and Ideology
Vance Keply, Jr., “Whose Apparatus?: problems of film exhibition and history.” Post-Theory.
David Bordwell, “Convention, Construction, Cinematic Vision.” Post-Theory.

March 27: Film Theory, Applications and Rebuttals II

Jane Gaines, “Women and Representation: can we enjoy alternative pleasure?” and “White Privilege and Looking Relations: race and gender in feminist film theory.” Issues in Feminist Film Theory.
Stephen Prince, “Psychoanalytic Film Theory and the Problem of the Missing Spectator.” Post-Theory.
Slavoj Zizek, “The Strange Case of the Missing Lacanians,” “Back to the Suture,” and “The Short Circuit.” The Fright of Real Tears.*
Richard J. Gerrig and Deborah A. Prentice, “Notes on Audience Response.” Post-Theory.

From Colonial to Postcolonial Studies

April 3: Orientalism and Its Critics

Edward Said, Orientalism.
James Clifford, “On Orientalism,” in The Predicament of Culture.*
Ann Laura Stoler, “Rethinking Colonial Categories: European Communities and the Boundaries of Rule.” CSSH 31 (January 1989).*

April 10: Colonialism and Knowledge:
Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.
Paul Rabinow, “Techno-Cosmopolitanism: Governing Morocco,” in French Modern. 1989.*
Homi K. Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,” in The Location of Culture.*

April 17: Subaltern Studies:
Ranajit Guha, ed. A Subaltern Studies Reader, 1986-1995. Minnesota, 1996, selections.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" In Marxism & The Interpretation of Culture. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, eds. London: Macmillan, 1988. pp. 271-313.*

April 24: Disciplining Postcolonial Studies:
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. 1991.
Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments, selections.*
Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History,” in The Subaltern Studies Reader.

FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 12 PM: FINAL PAPER DUE (IN DUPLICATE) IN MCMILLAN HALL, ROOM 139.