The Corporation formally accepted a $3 million gift Saturday toward the Humanities Initiative, which, according to a University statement, will "foster the development of interdisciplinary graduate and undergraduate programs" — a goal that, for the past five months, a committee from the Department of German Studies has been striving to achieve.
The department may hire professors that have academic reach beyond German studies, if a proposal currently before the Academic Priorities Committee is passed.
Following a series of vacancies in the Department of German Studies due to retirements and a tenure denial, the riorities committee sought "to go ahead in the strongest possible fashion," said Provost David Kertzer '69 P'95 P'98.
"The administration asked us to take a step back and look at what the future of German Studies would be," said Professor of English and Comparative Literature Kevin McLaughlin.
Over the summer, McLaughlin and other faculty members — including Susan Bernstein, professor of comparative literature and German studies; Omer Bartov, professor of history and of German studies; and Michael Steinberg, director of the Cogut Center for the Humanities and professor of history and music — carefully examined the various interdisciplinary programs in German studies that have already been implemented at Stanford University, the University of Toronto and Duke University.
All members of the group, with the exception of the two members from the Academic Priorities Committee — Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron and Professor of Classics John Cherry — were chosen for their expertise in German fields of study, Kertzer said.
After seeing the interdisciplinary model currently in use at Stanford and Toronto, McLaughlin said he "didn't think it was a good fit for Brown," but noted that the study heightened the group's desire to broaden the department.
"We felt very strongly that languages should not be isolated from the disciplinary fields in which they're working," he said.
A more interdisciplinary department would "produce greater energy and excitement around the teaching of study of Germany, its language, culture and history," Bartov wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.
The model that the group recently proposed to the priorities committee would allow the Department of German Studies to fill their vacancies with "someone who would be of interest to another department," McLaughlin said. "The impact of the appointment would have to be broader — would have to be beyond German."
Kertzer said the priorities committee should reach a decision on the proposal within the next few weeks.
According to McLaughlin, the department hopes to begin its search for new faculty members within the year.
Both Kertzer and McLaughlin spoke enthusiastically of the plans to develop a more interdisciplinary German Studies department.
"It's more desirable than one that is narrower," said Kertzer, a former professor of anthropology and Italian studies. "It opens a lot of other exciting possibilities for students."
Universities across the country are moving from isolated areas of study toward a more interdisciplinary approach that blurs the boundaries between once indivisible departments, McLaughlin said. "For a long time, that's what faculty lines were, and now they're not indivisible — not all of them."
Of the Humanities Initiative, McLaughlin said he was pleased that the announcement of the gift came at a time when many other American universities are feeling financial pressure to direct money solely towards the sciences.
"Brown is really sending a message that the humanities matter a lot to Brown, and to the way that we look at the world," he said.
McLaughlin emphasized exactly how important it is that universities begin to recognize not only the relationship that exists between languages and literature, but also their relationship to the history, politics and art that surround them.
"We live in languages," he added. "It's not like we can just take them and put them off to the side."
