Under what conditions did the modernist separation of the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the arts and humanities arise? In this interdisciplinary seminar, scholars of all three areas are invited to assess formative moments in and shifting boundaries between academic fields by examining key figures and movements from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. How robust is this trichotomy in the face of post-modern challenges?

Dates: June 10-26, 2002

• The Schedule

Director: David Depew, Professor, University of Iowa Department of Communication Studies and Project on the Rhetoric of Inquiry (POROI).

Place: The University of Iowa Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, Iowa City, Iowa.

Funded by the Office of the Vice President for Research, the C. Esco and Avalon L. Obermann Fund and by the Graduate College of the University of Iowa.

Seminar Scholars

David Depew - (Seminar Director) Communication Studies & POROI, The University of Iowa, "The Invention of Biology: Göttingen 1800"

John F. García - Classics, The University of Iowa
"On Translating Homer: Linguistic Relativity and the Modernization of Classical Studies"

Daniel Gross - Rhetoric, The University of Iowa, "Does Experience Have a Gender? The Anxiety of Influence in David Simple and David Hume"

John S. Nelson - Political Science and POROI, The University of Iowa, "Myth, Ideology, Science, and More?"

Frederick Skiff - Physics and Astronomy, The University of Iowa, "Maxwell and Modernity"

John P. Jackson, Jr. - Communication, University of Colorado at Boulder, "The Rise of Antiracist Science and the Politics of Social Construction"

Christopher Kuipers - English and Comparative Literature, University of California at Irvine, "New Philology: The Contemporary Emergence of Interdisciplinary Humanities"

Claudia Moscovici - Modern Languages and Literature, Boston University "Dystopic Utopias: The making and undoing of French Democratic Political Theory"

John Poulakos - Communication, University of Pittsburgh, "From the Depths of Rhetoric: The Emergence of Aesthetics as a Discipline"

Visiting Speakers

J.E. McGuire -
History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, "The Theological Origins of the Modern Concept of Nature"

James Porter -
Classics, University of Michigan, "Transformations of Classical Philology"

Phillip Sloan - Program of Liberal Studies, Notre Dame University, "Origins of Biology"

Graduate Research Assistants

Rachel Avon, Ph.D. Candidate, Rhetoric
Rosemary Steck, Ph.D. Candidate, Rhetoric