This episode of the EUTERPE podcast features a lecture by Ato Quayson, the Jean G. and Morris M. Doyle Professor in Interdisciplinary Studies, Professor of English, and Chair of the Department of African and African American Studies at Stanford University. The lecture was delivered at the third biannual EUTERPE Doctoral School, held at Central European University in Vienna, Austria. The episode includes an introduction to the lecture given by Sandra Ponzanesi, a EUTERPE Consortium member and the Principal Investigator for Utrecht University. Sandra is also a Chair and full Professor of Media, Gender and Postcolonial Studies and the Founding Director of the Postcolonial Studies Initiative at Utrecht University.

In this lecture, Quayson explores the conceptual landscape of interdisciplinarity, identifying two central principles at its core. The first is the notion of integrative epistemologies that apply across all fields of knowledge – sciences, social sciences, humanities, and the arts. The second involves collaborative modes of knowledge production aimed at addressing real-world issues, such as environmental degradation, urban complexity, water scarcity, public health crises, migration and refugees, international security, and the vagaries of globalization. He argues that meaningful interdisciplinary work requires a clear understanding of the concepts, methods, and propositional protocols borrowed from other disciplines, and an understanding of how these shape one’s own configuration of interdisciplinarity. True interdisciplinarity, he suggests, demands familiarity with the methods of all the disciplines involved, as well as humility and a self-awareness of one’s own disciplinary limits. Quayson illustrates these ideas using examples from his own scholarship and from influential thinkers in the humanities and social sciences, including Hayden White, Christopher Norris, Gillian Beer, Edward Said, and Karen Barad. This lecture was originally delivered on 10/09/2024.

The episode transcript can be accessed here.

This episode is part of the EUTERPE Podcast Library on European Literatures and Genders from a Transnational Perspective

The podcast is powered by the European Union, UKRI, and the Central European University Library.

Grant Agreement: 101073012 EUTERPE HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 Project.

For more information about the EUTERPE project please refer to the official project webpage https://www.euterpeproject.eu/, or follow us on Instagram @euterpe_project_ or Facebook at EUTERPE Doctoral Network Project.

This episode was produced and edited by: Evangeline Scarpulla

Thank you to Alexander Walker for the music and to Alice Flinta for the voice over. Thank you also to Ninutsa Nadirashvili and Kris Orszaghova for designing the podcast covers.