Some Brown students find even the New Curriculum's existing concentrations too limiting. From trauma studies to rationality and decision making, Brown students are creating independent concentrations to merge academic disciplines in new ways and incorporate their experiences outside the University.
With the increase in interdisciplinary concentrations at Brown, the number of students pursuing independent concentrations has decreased slightly in the past few years, according to Associate Dean of the College Linda Dunleavy.
Most recent independent concentrations have been centered on issues in biomedical ethics and studies, Dunleavy said.
The University stopped accepting declarations in the concentration in biomedical ethics this semester due to a lack of funding and available faculty. Some prospective concentrators said they are now considering creating independent concentrations in biomedical ethics.
Heather Daniels '06 is working to get approval for her independent concentration in holistic health studies. Building on her experiences with Nepalese culture and different concepts of medicine and health during a semester off, Daniels aims to explore different means of viewing the concept of health other than through Western biomedicine.
According to Daniels, the holistic perspective she is trying to build upon "takes into account the person and the environment they are interacting with." Her proposal includes classes from a broad spectrum of departments, including philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, biology, community health and anthropology. The most unique part of Daniels' proposal is a class she plans to take at the University of Hawaii that studies health and healing in religion.
Another independent concentrator exploring a new perspective in medical studies is Bathsheba Demuth '06, who is working on trauma studies.
According to Demuth, her concentration is "an interdisciplinary look at how different economic and political factors create 'structural violence,' which is so detrimental to populations that it inflicts physical harm." Demuth hopes to analyze how public health and economic interventions can be designed to take into consideration psychological and cultural aspects that "go beyond the physical."
Demuth's concentration is based on the two years she spent living in a remote Native American village in the arctic, which she said made her notice how poverty and cultural influences often create different lifestyles that can be viewed from medical and sociological points of view. By taking a mix of comparative literature, public health, anthropology, history and sociology classes, Demuth is building on her experience in the arctic, which taught her to "read against the grain in various disciplines." She will complete her thesis work on her experience in the village.
Daniels' and Demuth's independent concentrations are characteristic of many new proposals that are heavily influenced by students' experiences outside of Brown, Dunleavy said.
Among other trends in the independent concentration program, Dunleavy has also noticed a rise in proposals in performance studies and digital media.
One of a few students who is doing work in these emerging disciplines, Sage Morgan-Hubbard '05, has titled her independent concentration "Perfor-mance Studies: the socially conscious art of the everyday." Morgan-Hubbard will draw from different fields at Brown including dance, ethnic studies and visual arts to explore how "everyday life is performative," she said.
Morgan-Hubbard said she is trying to analyze how certain academic subjects can have a performance element at their core as they deal with race, gender and sexuality. Her thesis project focuses on the photographer Lorna Simpson, who combines photography and text to address such, Morgan-Hubbard said.
Despite recent trends, however, independent concentrations are by no means limited to performance and biomedical studies. Adam Green '05 has titled his independent concentration "Rationality and decision making." Green is combining philosophy, psychology, statistics and economics courses to analyze game theory, decision theory and "expressive utility theory" in his concentration, which looks at how people should make decisions and how they actually make decisions, he said.
Green, who was two courses away from finishing his A.B. in physics, said he decided on an independent concentration because he felt his interests could not be fit into one or two subjects.
According to Dunleavy, most of the recent independent concentrations come in subjects that are on the "vanguard" of academia and have not had enough of a track record for Brown to create an official concentration.
But today's independent concentrations could become mainstream concentrations in the future. "Successful independent concentrations like ethnic studies end up being added as majors," Dunleavy said.
