Judith Modell is Professor of Anthropology, History, and Art at Carnegie Mellon University. Her most recent studies of adoption and foster care focus on the social impact of federal and state laws and practices. Professor Modell received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1978, and has been teaching at Carnegie Mellon since 1984.
Patricia Maurides is the director of two interdisciplinary degree-granting programs at Carnegie Mellon University: the Bachelor of Humanities and Arts (BHA) and the Bachelor of Science and Arts (BSA). She often works collaboratively on projects that intersect the biological sciences and the visual arts. She received her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, and has been working at the university since 1999. |
Chapter 20, selection: Culture, Society, and
the Arts Carnegie Mellon University has a long history of interdisciplinary
approaches to research, scholarship and practice. Colleges of Engineering,
Science, Humanities and Social Sciences, and Fine Arts provide a springboard
for interdisciplinary projects and exhibits. These efforts are enhanced
by the alertness to public policy evident at the Heinz School and by the
technological inventiveness of a renowned College of Computer Science.
At Carnegie Mellon, interdisciplinary ventures grow out of the initiatives
of individual faculty and students, and help to redefine the nature of
the disciplines and their relationship to changes in the larger society.
Such redefinition is especially important in the new century, with its
intensification of global movements of populations, ideologies, knowledge,
and resources. Education becomes part of far-reaching cultural, political,
and economic internationalization. Interdisciplinary endeavors have been variably visible
on the Carnegie Mellon campus; some endeavors gain widespread recognition,
both on and off campus, especially those that represent dramatic breakthroughs
in a field, innovations in a technological area, or contributions to the
rewriting of public legislation. At the same time, other less visible
sorts of interdisciplinary activities occur on a more individual level
and far more directed toward refining a critical approach or expanding
an imaginative vision or blending perspectives on a particular problem.
The second kind of activity has been characteristic of the interdisciplinary
efforts that link the College of Fine Arts (CFA) with the College of Humanities
and Social Sciences (H&SS). At Carnegie Mellon, the College of Fine
Arts houses the Schools of Art, Design, Drama, Architecture, and Music.
Each one of these has high standards for professional performance and
production. In the past decade, collaboration across the five schools
has expanded professional standards with new insights, alternative forms
of practice, and actual cooperative projects. While generally all schools
in the College emphasize practice and production skills, revision of what
those activities mean for students and for faculty has been underway,
with consequent changes in the curriculum. The Schools of Art and of Design,
for instance, have each introduced interdisciplinary programs that recognize
the connections between creativity, context, and culture. During the 1990s, the College of Fine Arts shifted its
programs more substantially as students and faculty both advocated the
importance to any artist of familiarity with the social and historical
settings of artistic activity. The College as a whole has expanded curriculum
and research projects to include humanistic approaches, social scientific
methodology, and techniques developed in the hard sciences. Increasingly,
too, the CFA curriculum includes a focus on the conditions under which
art is produced, exhibited, argued about, and (sometimes) destroyedanywhere
they occur. |
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