Interdisciplinary Programs

Creative Writing | History of Culture | Jewish Studies | Poetry and Poetics

These programs are part of the University of Chicago's commitment to interdisciplinary research and learning. The distinctive feature of a committee, that its faculty have joint appointments in different departments across the university, leads to vibrant and exciting exchanges of ideas and of methodologies. For example, members of the Committee on Jewish Studies variously hold appointments in Divinity, Germanic Studies, History, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and Philosophy. Students benefit from teachers who share their students' immediate intellectual concerns but can also extend their students' disciplinary range to other, related fields of inquiry.

Committee on Creative Writing

The Committee on Creative Writing gives students a rigorous background in the fundamentals of creative work by providing them with the opportunity to study with established poets and prose writers. It differs from the professional, free-standing creative writing programs at other universities in seeing itself as an integral part of the university's intellectual life, and most particularly in providing opportunities for interdisciplinary work. The university currently offers three undergraduate and one graduate non-professional program option in creative writing. The graduate option is offered through the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities. All options encourage students to maintain their commitment to an academic discipline while also pursuing course work and final projects in creative writing.

Committee on the History of Culture

The Committee on the History of Culture is an interdisciplinary group that provides a space of opportunity for students doing original, critical work in the humanities and the interpretative wing of the social sciences. The program brings together faculty with primary expertise in a variety of signifying practices (literary/linguistic, visual, gestural, and musical/sonoric), historic periods, parts of the globe (North America, Europe, eastern Mediterranean, South Asia, Australia), and theoretical orientations. At the broadest level, the goal is to explore the politics and poetics of knowledge and culture, bringing a cultural studies perspective to bear on the artifacts and historic record of the past, as on contemporary society. Beyond this is an attempt to reflect critically on the historic development of discourse about culture, as well as the cultural significance and political import of discourse about history.

Committee on Jewish Studies

Jewish Studies has been an important field of research since the University's founding. The subsequent flourishing of Jewish Studies has been sustained by faculty appointments in a wide range of departments. During the past decade and a half, the University has appointed eminent scholars in the study of Hebrew Bible, Midrash, Jewish Medieval Studies, Hebrew Literature, American Jewish Literature, Jewish political thought, Yiddish literture, Modern Jewish Thought, and German Jewish Culture. Working together, they have created one of the most comprehensive, distinguished and interdisciplinary programs in Jewish Studies available at any American university. Students can make full use of the resources in Jewish Studies available through the Divinity School (which has a "history of Judaism" tract"), the Departments of Germanic Studies, History, Linguistics, Philosophy, Music, Near Eastern Languages & Literature, and the Oriental Institute. There is also a rich undergraduate program in Jewish Studies with a dynamic Hebrew language component.

Program in Poetry and Poetics

The Program in Poetry and Poetics is overseen by an ad-hoc committee of faculty from various departments. It draws together some of the resources at the University currently devoted to the teaching and study of poetry and poetics. The University offers courses devoted to the writing of poems, courses in the history of poetry from different periods and in different languages, and courses that focus on particular poetic styles. The aim of the Program is to coordinate our various approaches and practices and help students at all levels to pursue work that crosses disciplines and discourses. The Program also supports collaboration among faculty members in the form, for example, of team-taught courses, conferences, lecture series, and the Poetics Workshop.