In my first semester at Oberlin, I remember being shocked at how often slight overlaps would come up across my different classes. At the time, I was taking a first-year seminar in the Dance department, intro Creative Writing and Gender/Sexuality/Feminist Studies classes, and a course about food justice in the Environmental Studies department. In the third week of the semester, we talked about Sara Ahmed and queer phenomenology in three out of my four classes, and I felt like the world in my brain was exploding. I was convinced it was the wildest coincidence known to Oberlin. But as the semester continued, this pattern only deepened.
Now, as I settle into the rhythm of my fourth semester, I have grown quite accustomed to these course “Oberlaps,” as I like to call them. They don’t happen quite so extensively every semester, but there are always at least a few. And this semester, I have a whole bucket-load!
Rather than explaining the pros of interdisciplinary learning to you, however, I have decided to provide a brief catalog of all the Oberlaps I have experienced so far this year. (Keep in mind it’s only the fourth week of the semester!)
First, let me provide a brief summary of each of my classes:
- MUSY 306: Music and Propaganda covers cultural diplomacy and exchange during the Cold War, including music and ballet, among other arts.
- SOCI 284: Environmental Sociology combines the fields of Environmental Studies and Sociology to analyze the social forces and constructions that shape our world and our relationship to it.
- GSFS 265: The Poetics and Politics of Health / Intro to Critical Health Humanities uses various forms of art and performance as the bases for learning about public health issues as they relate to gender and sexuality.
- DANC 217: Improvisation in Dance and Mind studies the work of many great improvisers of the past and present, and invites students to cultivate their own improvisational dance practices.
Now for the exciting part: the Oberlaps! I’ve even started keeping track of them in a little notes app list on my phone.
American National Theatre and Academy: In the first week of the semester, I read an article for my Musicology class about the ANTA, which was contracted by the State Department to select artists for cultural diplomacy programs during the Cold War. Although the panel did receive federal funding, there were some questions as to the level of bias in terms of who was selected to travel abroad. The next week, I was reading a biography of Anna Halprin for my Dance class, in which Janice Ross says, “She had begun openly embracing less structured ways of working... but these didn’t blossom into her signature dance-theater works until after she returned from performances in New York in 1955 as part of the ANTA Festival.” If I had not been taking these classes at the same time, I may not have realized the historical role that the ANTA was playing in the Cold War at the same time.
The social model of disability: During week three of the semester, we watched the movie Crip Camp in my GSFS class, and discussed in depth the history of the disability justice movement, accessible bathrooms, and the social model of disability, which reframes the typical medical model to acknowledge that societal barriers disable people in many ways, sometimes very small ones. That same afternoon in my Dance class, we discussed a reading by Bruce Curtis, a quadriplegic who discovered Contact Improvisation as a more freeing way to let his body be moved by gravity. Then, we also talked about the social model of disability and spent time reflecting on what we are personally disabled by on a daily basis. We ended class by performing improvisations about our individual experiences and relationships to disability.
Ecofeminism: This week in my GSFS class, we have been discussing the play Heroes & Saints by Cherríe Moraga, which uses Chicana ecofeminism to unveil the horrible injustices of pesticide poisoning for farm workers in California. For my Sociology class, I read a chapter by Michael Bell about environmental domination, in which he defines ecofeminism as an ideology. We then used that framework, as well as Stella Čapek’s environmental justice frame, to analyze the injustices occurring at a Superfund site in Picher, Oklahoma, as documented in the movie Tar Creek.
The modern Civil Rights Movement: Earlier today, we talked extensively in my Sociology class about racialized wealth and segregation, especially as they relate to inequity in homeownership. We examined federal policies, racialized practices, and individual perceptions that make it harder for Black families to buy homes in the US. Last week in my Musicology class, we read a chapter from Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning, which also addressed racial covenants in white neighborhoods that prevented Black families from buying homes. This one was one of many examples of segregation that we discussed in relation to Cold War race relations. Without the historical context of these policies, it is hard to understand the full depth of the Civil Rights Movement as it existed in the 1960s and as it still exists today.
Looking back, I realize I never had access to such extensive cross-curricular connection when I was in high school. Oberlin has granted me an incredible opportunity to dive deeply into many different fields, while simultaneously deepening my understanding of all of them. While there are many part of a liberal arts education that I value, this ability to apply content from one class to something I am learning in another class is by far one of my favorite parts!
