Disciplinary identity of Area Studies
Date: 29 November 2004
Location: CILT, London
Call for papers
Global forms of knowledge and their advocates will not generate the funding for area studies unless the necessity for area-specific knowledge is clearly and
widely understood. But instead of building its own intellectual foundations in the university, the intellectual benefits of area studies have gone into the disciplines, including language teaching. (Ludden 1998).Area Studies courses are widely taught in UK Higher Education, and multidisciplinary Area Studies Associations continue to thrive yet practitioners generally see themselves primarily as historians, political scientists, geographers, linguists etc. and not as Area Studies specialists. This raises questions about the support provided by the Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies.
The Area Studies Project involved six partner Subject Centres from the arts, humanities and social sciences. The nature of disciplinarity and notions of interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity were soon identified both optimistically as opportunities or more pessimistically as threats to current disciplines.This conference aims to discuss the nature of Area Studies and its value to its composite disciplines, its contribution to teaching and research and most importantly whether Area Studies itself is, or can become a discipline.
Contributions may include, but are not limited to:
Area Studies: a discipline?
Links between teaching and research in Area Studies
Institutional structures of Area Studies
Area Studies and government policy
Bringing Area Studies into disciplines.
Contribution of disciplines to Area Studies.
International perspectives on Area Studies
Issues of identity for staff and students.
Please send proposals for papers to: John Canning j.canning@soton.ac.uk by Friday 1 October 2004. The Subject Centre will pay travel expenses within the UK for papers accepted.Register for this event at http://www.lang.ltsn.ac.uk/events/llaseventitem.aspx?resourceid=2166
Further reading
Ludden, D. 1998. Area Studies in the Age of Globalisation http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dludden/areast2.htm
