“Orientalism Revisited: A Conversation across Disciplines”

TY - JOUR

T1 - “Orientalism Revisited

T2 - A Conversation across Disciplines”

AU - Şahin, Kaya

AU - Schleck, Julia

AU - Stearns, Justin

N1 - Funding Information: I do think that collaboration is one good way to surmount philological and disciplinary challenges, and produce work that will appeal to a variety of scholars and readers. There are some institutional foundations for collaboration in the United States. The three of us first met at an NEH Summer Seminar in 2010, called “Remapping the Renaissance: Exchange between Early Modern Islam and Europe.” It was directed by Judith Tucker, an Ottomanist/Islamicist, and Adele Seeff, a Europeanist. (Here, it should also be noted that the Center for Renaissance and Baroque Studies at the University of Maryland, our host, was shut down a few years later as a result of decanal fiat and technocratic reorganization.) Julia and I organized a similar gathering at Indiana University in the summer of . Several other scholars put together seminars and institutes focusing on East–West relations, Mediterranean history, the global Middle Ages, and similar interdisciplinary and cross-cultural configurations. That is one way to foster collaborations, but it is not enough in itself, since it leaves the choice to the participants, almost all of whom prefer to focus on their individual projects, albeit in an environment that brings together different fields and disciplines. There are a few collaborative grants, ranging from small ones, like those at the Newberry Library, to large ones, like those sponsored by the ACLS, but these are quite competitive. The incentives for collaboration are there, in other words, but they may not be well-structured and readily available. Collaboration almost always comes as an addition to our own work. The biggest institutional obstacle is the tenure and promotion process in the social sciences and the humanities in American academia, which privileges single-authored articles and books. One glimmer of hope is coming from Europe, where both larger entities like the European Research Council and Erasmus+, and smaller ones like the German Research Foundation (DFG), have been supportive of humanities research and scholarly collaboration. Likewise, academic institutions have been more encouraging about collaborative collectives, even though many of these are time- and grant-bound, and do not result in the creation of tenured/permanent positions that could sustain similar collaborations over a longer period of time.

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85112585036&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85112585036&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/10412573.2021.1915009

DO - 10.1080/10412573.2021.1915009

M3 - Review article

AN - SCOPUS:85112585036

SN - 1041-2573

VL - 33

SP - 196

EP - 207

JO - Exemplaria

JF - Exemplaria

IS - 2

ER -