Oct. 26, 2005

We Need Humanities Labs

“Solitude vivifies; isolation kills.”
—Joseph Roux, Meditations of a Parish Priest, 1886

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I wonder how an English professor would feel spending a week in a physics lab. Not about the scientific work, but about the frequent, ongoing interaction between students and peers, post-docs and faculty. Scientists see each other in the lab, if not daily, then at least weekly. They have frequent lab meetings, colloquia and interaction with scholars at other universities around joint research. During my graduate training in psychology at McGill University, especially in the research lab at the Montreal Neurological Institute, I spent hours hanging around the post-docs. I learned at least as much from them as I did from my interactions with my professors. The expectation was that I would be at the lab 9 to 5 or more, every day. I saw my adviser every day.

My curiosity about this hypothetical English professor’s reaction began after a discussion with my father, a professor emeritus in physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara. As we chatted about my work as a dissertation and tenure coach, he expressed shock when I recounted how graduate students in English could go a month or more with no contact with their advisor. He estimated that his students usually saw him daily, and never went for more than a week without interaction with him, except when he was traveling. As he quizzed me more and more about the grad student experience in humanities departments, it became more and more clear to me that there is a deep divide.

In the humanities, outside of the classroom, this kind of easy and even semi-formal interaction is rare. The isolation for the grad student begins in earnest when the coursework is finished and the qualifying exams are completed. The fledgling ABD is nudged out of the nest, left to fly solo for long periods. The luckiest students have advisors who are mentors and insist on frequent meetings, which increase accountability and allow the student to learn how to think in a scholarly manner. The large majority, however, are left to flounder, some of them working as adjuncts far from the institution where they are trying to finish a Ph.D.

The students whose advisers organize monthly dissertation meetings get some help with the isolation. These meetings usually involve prior submission of one’s work, with a presentation and then feedback from peers and one’s advisor during the meeting. The opportunity to present one’s own work may come up only once every few months. For many grad students, most writing is accomplished in the days preceding submission of their work. I believe that these meetings are too infrequent and too formal to make up for the absence of ongoing interaction with other scholars.

Beyond these dissertation meetings, scholarly dialogue with peers or advisers is sporadic in most departments outside the sciences. In many cases, the adviser’s expectation is that the student will request a meeting when the student is ready. Thus begins one of the vicious cycles of graduate school. The student, working in a void, measures himself against what he imagines his peers are doing. Often he finds himself lacking, and feels ashamed. So he puts off the meeting with his adviser. This increases his isolation and sense of inadequacy. He feels that he is floundering and going in circles. Without encouragement and deadlines, such students can languish for months, and even years.

As a dissertation coach, I’ve worked with many such students. The luckier ones are early in the process and not yet consumed with self-loathing and shame. Others have been at it for years and feel terrible about themselves. It is noteworthy that 80-90 percent of the calls I receive for dissertation coaching are from students in the humanities, social sciences or education — all fields less likely to have a lab environment. The rest are writing their dissertation away from their university and find it difficult to work in that void.

Conferences and conventions offer important opportunities for scholarly dialogue, as do online blogs. However, there are limitations to conferences (too infrequent) and blogs. What I am advocating is injecting into the humanities department some of the freewheeling dialogue found in the halls outside the conference presentation or in some of the better scholarly blogs.

Why is there such a difference between the hard sciences and the humanities? An obvious reason is that science is best done in groups, due to the availability of expensive equipment and the need for collaboration to make elaborate projects work. Second, science is funded largely by grants, which contain within them the need for accountability. The person in charge of the grant will make darn sure that neither time nor money is being wasted, by frequently checking in with those doing the research and writing.

Barton Kunstler, who wrote “The Hothouse Effect: Time Proven Strategies of History’s Most Creative Groups,” in Futures Research Quarterly, argues that organizations can grow into “creative hothouses,” much as Ancient Athens or Renaissance Florence. If humanities departments were to proceed as outlined by Kunstler, they would go beyond counting their peer-reviewed publications, and move into creating lasting legacies and nurturing breakthrough thinking. Kunstler identifies the attributes of organizations likely to spawn such changes, including the following: “workers immerse themselves in others’ ideas and work, absorbing creative influences,” and “mentor relationships abound.” Clearly, it would benefit all the members of such a department, not just the struggling graduate students, to create an atmosphere that “spawns ‘geniuses’” and “stands at the center of a wider cultural movement.”

How will such changes occur in actual practice? Certainly there is not a need for more departmental meetings. Kunstler suggests that you “reevaluate the basic assumptions and methods of your discipline,” and “challenge your most treasured paradigms.” Those at the higher levels can begin by modeling the behavior they would like to see in others — proposing informal discussions, sharing work with colleagues, discussing publishing with faculty from other departments, and seeking out a grad student or two to bounce ideas off of. If every professor advising graduate students made it a point to have a substantive conversation with one of his or her ABD’s a day, the picture for many grad students would change radically.

I suggest that graduate students begin at the grassroots level. They should suggest weekly meetings to peers, with the only agenda being the discussion of work in progress at an informal level. If they are geographically scattered, they can meet by phone — there are free conference lines available. In my coaching groups there is a high level of closeness and support, even though none of these people have met in person. People should be encouraged to attend with partly formed thoughts, poorly written paragraphs, or just an idea they want to develop. The idea is to think of all such scholarly dialogue as a laboratory. Ideas are cooked up, thrown in the test tube, and mixed with human interaction, creativity and motivation. These experiments will produce better written and less painfully produced dissertations or publications, and might engender a “creative humanities hothouse.”

Gina Hiatt is a clinical psychologist and dissertation and tenure coach. She is the founder of Academic Ladder. Her blog is AcademiBlog.

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Comments

Inviting the dialogue

Gina,

Thanks for such an insightful take (We Need Humanities Labs) on a profound problem that, I believe, is present in both the academic and business sectors.

In the March 1999 issues of Harvard Business Review, John P. Kotter penned a classic, “What Effective General Managers Really Do” that, in spite of what business textbooks were advocating, suggested that “... seemingly wasteful activities like chatting in hallways and having impromptu meetings are, in fact, quite efficient.” Kotter goes on to emphasize that “flexible agendas and broad networks of relationships” enable opportunity and accomplishment “... through a large and diverse set of people despite having little direct control over most of them.”

This also seems to be the case in higher education generally, indeed at the graduate level. For me, the essential question is “what do educational institutions want their grad students to be, to do, to achieve?” The responses to this question should lead to the objectives of grad school training and then to the steps (processes and procedures) that encourage a successful result.

It also seems that this is an elemental performance measure that is readily available and easily applied —if there is a willingness on the part of the institution and its faculty to truly want to measure “plans” against “results.”

Too much of education and too much of the so-called business world is structured around boxes of identity, i.e., this student is an English major, therefore ..., this employee is an accountant, therefore....

This antiquated and limiting approach has more to do with the rigidity of organizational design than it has to do with encouraging and assisting in the development of human potential.

You note that Barton Kunstler’s book argues for organizations to grow into “creative hothouses” similar to the forum and salon-like venues in Athens and Florence. Yes, absolutely. I call it, “inviting the dialogue” and I encourage it in my courses, my consulting, and everyday interactions.

This does, however, beg the question regarding the “intent” of the grad school experience and whether or not those advising students have the inclination, time, or reward system in place to willfully engage the student.

You nail it when you say, “People should be encouraged to attend with partly formed thoughts, poorly written paragraphs, or just an idea they want to develop. The idea is to think of all such scholarly dialogue as a laboratory.” Yes! In fact, that “encouragement” should be a part of our daily experience.

Michael, at 1:36 pm EDT on October 26, 2005

Labs are important intellectual communities

As we have studied doctoral education at the Carnegie Foundation we have seen that participation in a robust intellectual community helps students develop as researchers and teachers. Students and faculty alike appreciate the opportunity to share ideas and engage with new findings and work in progress. In the humanities this often often happens in small seminar classes, and in the sciences, Journal clubs are an important venue. This helps students maintain the passion for the discipline, which brought them to graduate school in the first place.Moreover, I believe that the lab setting, and the regular interactions with more advanced graduate students and post docs can help normalize and reduce the enormity of the inevitable setbacks and challenges of graduate school. This helps explain the lower attrition rates in the sciences relative to the humanities.

Chris Golde, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, at 1:36 pm EDT on October 26, 2005

The exchange of ideas has always been the impetus of civilizations’ greatest accomplishments. Even in literature, the most fruitful works stem from groups of writers gathering together. Paris in the early 20th century; London coffeeshops in the 1700-1800s; New England; and the Inklings (with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien). Our greatest writers from across the world regularly traded ideas with others and benefitted from that contact. Why shouldn’t the academic world take the gatherings and use them to their advantage?

Ben, at 2:30 pm EDT on October 26, 2005

What about the library?

I’m working on my third graduate institution (as a student) and at all of the places I’ve, the library has functioned in much the same way as the laboratory. It is where everyone can be found most of the time. The lobby/front entrance area is a central space for casual exchanges of the academic and non-academic variety. If the place happens to have a coffee-shop, the effect is amplified. I have discovered a number of people interested in the same topics I am simply by noticing where they work in the library or the stack of books surrounding them. And if one’s advisor has an active research program, he or she will appear there too.

While I would love to have an office — or even a desk — the fact of the matter is that most humanities PhDs require little more than access to lots of books. The library is already there.

Paris, at 4:18 pm EDT on October 26, 2005

Solitude May Lead to Independent Thinking

As a doctoral candidate in the humanities, I would agree that closer mentorship with professors and with dissertation committee would be very helpful, though certainly not weekly or maybe even monthly. I and everyone I know indeed floundered awhile after going ABD. However, as publishing in the humanities is a decidedly individual endeavor, unlike the sciences, and there will not be folks around when we are faculty who will meet with us weekly to discuss my latest paragraph or half-formed thought, that floundering I did was a good learning experience. It made me figure out what I need to do to move myself forward without an advisor calling me to check. Additionally, as a student who lives far away from my home campus, I notice when I do visit that those folks who are on campus daily all seem to talk alike and think alike, all using the same jargon and endlessly agreeing with each other. Perhaps working by one’s self to develop the ideas and then working with others to hone those ideas after they’re already fairly developed in the writer’s mind, actually leads to independent thinking rather than groupspeak. Yes, improvements could definitely be made, but I think the fundamental difference between how science is done and how scholarship in the humanities is done precludes the idea of humanities labs.

Grad Student, at 6:11 pm EDT on October 26, 2005

umm, we do have labs. they are called bars.

Jonas!, Mastermind at The CardBoard Box Mansion, at 6:11 pm EDT on October 26, 2005

Humanities interchanges

Well, how about small liberal arts colleges? Our Department of Modern Languages and Literatures for a long time exchanged papers, discussed projects in the hall, and critiqued each others’ grant proposals. I learned a lot about literatures about which I had known little, and eras that I have never studied. The atmosphere changed after many received tenure and moved into their own spheres or left. Some of us still remain “cross-readers” as a result of our experience. At the College level, grant proposals are read by a cross-section of faculty for sabbatical and summer grants, and produce much interesting discussion. Though not research-centered, a liberal arts college can provide a “laboratory"-like setting for humanists!

LM, at 9:02 pm EDT on October 26, 2005

Just labs are not enough

Having places where people are encouraged—or required—to exchange ideas is a great idea, but it is only half of the science lab equation. The other half is collaborative projects.

In a science lab, there are many people working on one big project, or on a number of very closely related projects. When people in the lab sit down for a cup of coffee and chat, they already are thoroughly familiar with each other’s issues and questions, and more importantly have a personal stake in finding the answers.

In the humanities, on the other hand, everyone’s project is an lone endeavor. It is almost impossible to have a meaningful conversation about your research with someone if they don’t know anything about your specific topic. And if you are the only person who has ever invested three years into reading through Wilkinson Emmet’s papers, who will you turn to when you want to test out your interpretation of a passage in one of his letters to his younger son in June, 1745? It would take months to familiarize anyone with all the materials he or she would need to know in order to make even a half-informed comment. Unfortunately, in history at least, almost no one, including your advisor, knows anything about your specific project other than the abstracts and reports you have given them yourself. The result is that we all talk about methodology or point out weaknesses in each other’s papers, instead of discussing substantive issues in our research.

Collaborative projects allow the sciences to avoid this problem. In a joint paper, all of the substantive authors have an in-depth understanding of the issues and the data, so they can discuss any part of it with each other in detail. People working in the same lab are usually collaborating with a number of people on one or more joint papers. Furthermore, most of the projects in a single lab will overlap substantially with other projects in the same lab, in terms of theory, methodology or data.

Imagine how much interaction you would have with your advisor and your fellow graduate students if five of you were writing a monograph together, with, god forbid, all of your names appearing together on the cover? Imagine how much interaction you would have with someone who was trying to duplicate your research, as people routinely do in the sciences to make sure that experimental results are reliable? Furthermore, the books which resulted from these collaborative processes would be much better than what we produce as individuals now.

As long as the model for research in the humanities is the lone researcher producing a monolithic work that makes a unique contribution to the field, informal intellectual exchange will continue to be difficult. If humanities researchers could collaborate on joint papers, as they do in the sciences, then there would be the same kind of interaction we see in science labs, not otherwise. Unfortunately, the humanities seem firmly wed to the cult of the lone genius.

Alex, ABD, of course at Columbia University, at 2:59 pm EDT on October 27, 2005

INDEPENDENCE & INTERDEPENDENCE

The cult of the lone genius is indeed the problem. Those in math and science become accustomed to bouncing ideas off of colleagues who are far from expert in every field that may arise during the course of a discussion. In certain significant ways, theirs is simply a less insecure intellectual environment. This is a cultural (to some extent economically-driven) difference. For humanities students who spend countless hours alone with an obscure passage in one hand and a blank piece of paper in the other, the hope that they are indeed lone geniuses becomes not only an indispensable crutch but ultimately an almost involuntary mode of interacting with colleagues. The more conversations I have with fellow humanities graduate students, the more I end up talking with people who seem not to know how to listen, but rather who have willingly trapped themselves inside a kind of large, safely mirrored test tube. Real listening is the willingness to allow yourself to be changed by others (Alan Alda — yes, wisdom from a non-academic). On the whole, it’s the scientists who go to colleagues seeking new perspectives, while humanities students appear frequently to seek no more than outside confirmation of the longed-for geniushood. Until we in the humanities learn to function not just independently but interdependently, our field will continue to stagnate in post-isms and new words for old ideas we have yet to really implement.

Sarah, at 10:26 pm EDT on October 27, 2005

No discipline is exempt from interaction

I agree that the humanities differ drastically from the sciences in terms of the nature of the projects and how they are funded/accounted for, but I don’t agree that this difference makes interaction less crucial, or a discussion of humanities projects futile. Let us take the “loneliest-genius-iest” humanity project there is, the writing of a novel. You will find that while there indeed exist novelists who lock themselves until the last sentence, by far more novelists write alone for a portion of the day and then talk to other writers, read other people’s work, and write lit reviews. The point is not to talk about what you are wroking on specifically, but to inspire your synapses to fire in a way slightly differently from when you are by yourself. The lone genius model, like the suidical writer/painter/musician, is romantic but not to be emulated, and though the humanities fields do not encourage collaboration in its operation, it does not HAVE to be the status quo. Even if the “lab” takes place in a bar, I heartily agree we need something with its spirit (no pun intended).

Linda, Grad Student at Columbia University, at 4:37 am EDT on October 28, 2005

Idea Snatchers

There seems to be a pervasive fear of idea snatching in the realm of humanities research that inhibits complete openness and the exchange of ideas for transformative purposes among researchers. This fear, along with the anxiety produced by realizing the pervasive influence of the work and scholars who have gone before, seems to fuel the competition among lone scholars for the title of genius. Is this assessment accurate in any way? If so, should the focus of graduate research in the humanities then focus not solely on an original contribution to the advancement of knowledge, but on significance and relevance thoughtfully defined?

Ro, at 11:07 am EDT on October 28, 2005

Did Aristotle need a lab?

How many great literary or philosophical works within the Western tradition were written by a committee? Clearly, great thinkers often conversed with one another, and clearly, they benefited from each other’s ideas and critiques, but most of these thinkers either created or actively sought out venues in which intellectual discussion could occur. Plato founded the Academy. Aristotle founded the Lyceum. None of these thinkers required the structure of the scientific laboratory to be created for them in order to prosper. Therefore, if graduate students feel isolated, inadequate, or whatever, they need to take responsibility for seeking out discussions with both professors and other graduate students. If nothing else, they should join reading groups already formed for them by other, more advanced graduate students in their department, possibly even if the texts that these groups read are not specifically in their area of expertise. This would at least help to prevent them from creating their own personal echo chambers, which, according to previous comments, seems to be a problem for some students. Of course, departments should attempt to foster discussions among graduate students and faculty by either having workshops where graduate students and professors within the department present finished papers or works in progress or by bringing other scholars to campus to present their work, especially if these scholars take approaches that differ in some respects from the prevailing approach—assuming there is one—within the department. Nevertheless, a department should expect and rely on graduate students to create their own opportunities for discussion, and if they habitually fail to do so, it should find some way of getting better, more active, and more intellectually curious graduate students in the future.

James, graduate student at Notre Dame, at 7:09 pm EDT on October 28, 2005

Workshops in MA & PhD programs?

It seems to me that MFA creative writing programs by way of their writing workshops foster far more of the interaction Hiatt points to than do MA and PhD programs of scholarship. Not least given the explosive growth and interest in MFA programs, I’ve wondered why MA and PhD programs haven’t nearly as much or at all incorporated such workshops (that focus on student work) into their own structure.

Tony Christini, at 7:09 pm EDT on October 28, 2005

Aristotle didn’t need graduate school

While it would be easy to advocate that departments riddled with isolationists simply go to the local student bank and get new blood, I would rather point out how much more difficult it is for anyone to contribute seminal work to the canon of Western thought while clinging to his/her own bootstraps 24/7. Surely Aristotle created the Lyceum for a reason. Perhaps he recognized the need for a forum.

Sarah, at 5:01 am EDT on October 29, 2005

Aristotle’s Lyceum, Panofsky’s Warburg

I’ve been thinking the same thing about humanities lab for years (those years spent in splendid isolation working on my Ph.D.), watching (with envy!) astrophysicist friends interacting daily with colleagues from their fields in their own research institute. The isolation does not make any sense. It is purely an egoistic search for recognition and fear of idea snatching as some have noted here already. But in fact working alone is a waste of time and it prevents good science from being written. Don’t take my word for it: look at the Warburg Institute in the 1920s and the flourishing of top-notch research and thinking that it led to. I’ve kept hoping that this sort of lab atmosphere would be easy to duplicate over the net (forums, blogs, etc.) but I keep being disappointed there (can’t find a place to meet my peers). Anyone else has this problem ?

Fab, at 5:36 am EST on November 6, 2005

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