Sunday, June 21, 2015

a wandering perspective

When I was still doing scholarship, I had a real issue trying to limit my critical approach to just one area. I got my Masters in English, but I couldn't just use literary scholarship or theory...I had to include work from other disciplines (such as psychiatry).

This had both positives and negatives. Bringing in outside stuff did help me stand out and add some real depth to my work. However, it increased the amount of work I had to do. As well as gaining fluency in my own field, I also had to be reasonably conversant in other fields. This, of course, made going into Culture Studies a perfect fit, but my doctoral area of concentration just compounded the issue. I realized I was out of control when I found myself sitting at a table in the library with a two-foot stack of books on Sociology theory...all for a single footnote.

I did eventually give this all up (aided by me bombing out of the academic market). Still, I continue to have a semi-serious interest in a bunch of other fields, including chaos theory, network intelligence, complexity, and urban planning...and I particularly love discovering folk who apply one of these areas to other fields. So when I discovered an article about the show Sesame Street redesigning their sets using the principles of urban planning, I was stoked.

It's always nice to see the creative application of neat theory...even when it's not me doing it.

No comments: