Grasping after the Elusive: Interdisciplinarity in Medieval and American Studies

In the 1920s and 1930s, decades before interdisciplinarity rose to prominence with fields like cognitive science and Black Studies, two new fields embraced its mandates: American Studies and Medieval Studies. To understand this unexpected rise of a new academic epistemological model, this paper examines early writing in the two fields with special attention to methodology. Scholars in both fields hoped to use interdisciplinary approaches to access the seemingly inaccessible: one grappled with the elusive nature of American culture and cultural history; the other with the mysteries of the so-called dark ages. One field seemed too close for traditional disciplines to be useful, one too far.

While seeking to understand the epistemological project of interdisciplinary, this paper will also trace the political implications of these projects, which link to all-encompassing ideals of culture to whiteness, if incidentally. What does this mean for the development of these fields? And what are the ramifications for later "interdisciplines," many of which intentionally worked against the idea of culture as white?