Formal Discipline Research Articles

Reception of the figure of Mykhailo Hrushevskyi in diasporic historiography: a new historiographic meaningful

The article analyzes the first monograph of the historian Mykhailo Sabinskyi “The figure of Mykhailo Hrushevskyi in Ukrainian foreign historiography of the 1940s-1980s.”. The book highlights the complex processes of formation and disciplinary complication of diasporic Hrushevskiana. First of all, the author investigated that the period 1940-1965 is an important stage of Ukrainian diaspora historiography, which marked a gradual departure from the concepts and practices of mainland Ukrainian studies of the previous era and convergence with Western socio-humanitarianism. Next, M. Sabinskyi proved that the centenary anniversary of M. Hrushevskyi was a significant event in the intellectual life of Ukrainians abroad. Despite the stereotyped thinking of some diaspora figures, thanks to extensive media promotion and numerous public and scientific initiatives, it was possible to turn the personal date of the distinguished scientist into a holiday of Ukrainian culture, which is important for the consolidation of the emigrant community. The researcher showed that all this made possible the emergence of L. Vynar's disciplinary initiative to start scientific Hrushevskyi’s studies. The modern historian emphasized that the dynamism of the progress of this field of Ukrainian studies in the following decades allows us to confirm the power of the historiographical impulse given by the anniversary events. In conclusion, the author noted that the diasporic Hrushevskiana appears as a historiographical phenomenon that is complex in its ideological nature and diverse in its forms of realization and stylistic practices. Being a means of inter-party emigration confrontation in the first post-war years, it went through the stages of institutionalization and disciplinary formation during the following decades. As a result, a respectable field of Ukrainian studies emerged, whose representatives systematically interpret the national phenomenon of M. Hrushevskyi in the broad context of his time. It was the solid academic level of diaspora Hrushevskyi’s studies achieved at the end of the 1980s that enabled the significant achievements of mainland historiography in its study of the legacy of the historian after independence.

Setting the Stage for Disciplinary Transformations: Riker, McKenzie, and the Case of the University of Rochester

This article offers a historical reconstruction of the birth and shaping of two research communities at the University of Rochester, that of economists and that of political scientists. Starting from the late 1950s, the arrival at Rochester of the renowned mathematical economist Lionel W. McKenzie and, later, of the innovative political scientist William H. Riker transformed this university into a leading research institution in economics and political science. The simultaneous presence of Riker and McKenzie at Rochester introduces a “local dimension” in this story, especially since Riker's aim was to convert political science into a theory-driven, highly formal discipline, which he labeled “positive political theory,” apparently along similar lines as the postwar mathematical revolution in economics, of which McKenzie was one of the main characters. This article tries to assess the existence, direction, and effects of this “local” element in the case of Rochester.

The geoscience education research (GER) community of practice: a brief history and implications from a needs assessment survey

The geoscience education research (GER) community has evolved and grown over the past several decades. Using Wenger et al.'s Community of Practice (CoP) model (2002), we discuss how the GER CoP (which is broader than the formal discipline of GER) has changed, highlighting noteworthy events and growth points. Trends in community membership and connections are noted. Additionally, we conducted a GER community needs assessment to identify ways in which the CoP could build on its momentum. The survey included questions on CoP member demographics, engagement in GER work, and professional development needs. We received 107 responses, primarily from the United States and from individuals with geology or atmospheric science backgrounds. The survey highlighted the need for intentional outreach to international venues, K-12 teacher audiences, and underrepresented groups in the GER community. The survey also revealed the various ways in which GER CoP members engage in research, teaching, and dissemination activities. The most commonly used resources for increasing GER knowledge were the SERC site and the Journal of Geoscience Education (JGE). Respondents expressed a strong desire for professional development opportunities, including methodological training and community knowledge exchanges. Based on the survey results, recommendations are proposed to enhance the inclusivity, mentorship, and dissemination efforts within the GER community. The findings emphasize the importance of networking, expanding resources, and addressing the needs of diverse members to foster a vibrant and inclusive GER community.

Religious Figures as Philosophers

This article looks at narratives of major religious figures to draw similarities with the philosophical way of dialogue, modeled on the maieutic example set by Socrates, and makes a case that these religious figures ought to be considered and appreciated as philosophers. The study employs Critical Discourse Analysis in order to understand the interactions between religious figures, protagonists, other characters, and the reader. Conclusions address philosophical attitudes and techniques that match the Socratic Method in order to build the case that the religious figure provokes thinking and challenges paradigm as a philosopher does. The examples include being agile in interpretation, using absurdity and paradox, playing with irony, teaching with allegory, to develop meaning in dialogue with the other. The origins of philosophy begin with a way of life, a method of provoking thinking, an interest in examining and questioning what it is to be human. Systemic philosophy and its closely related sister religion have developed into formal disciplines of distinguished paradigms, where dogmatic beliefs are prioritized over freedom of inquiry. Yet this study makes the case that important figures of major religions were working with their interlocutors on how to think, not what to think.

Towards a Critical Diplomacy

Abstract This essay reflects on the potential that deepened reflexivity around cultural diplomacy has to radicalize the study and practice of diplomacy through engagement with academics and practitioners in the field of cultural relations. It explores culture’s role in cultural diplomacy as an expression of Eurocentric dualist constructions of nature and culture that reproduce a Western episteme and reassert universalizing claims that deny other ways of knowing and relating to the world. It aims to unsettle settler diplomacy by engaging with contemporary artists who mobilize understandings of the wampum belt as a function of diplomatic relations to give voice to the political consciousness that animates the Indigenous practice of place-based internationalism. In so doing, it advances a methodology toward increased reflexivity and critical space for discussion across disciplinary formations that currently function to separate the cultural and the political in centering Western statist diplomacy as the taken-for-granted field of diplomatic activity.

Inclusion in an Interdisciplinary Leadership Training Program: Perspectives From Self-Advocates.

Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (LEND) programs are interdisciplinary, graduate-level training programs that seek to promote improved outcomes for individuals with disabilities and their families. Many of these programs include individuals with disabilities as members of the self-advocacy discipline. In this study, 10 self-advocate trainees were interviewed to provide insight into the value of including self-advocates in training and the kinds of accommodations and supports that facilitated their success and inclusion. Interviewees endorsed the importance of including self-advocates in LEND programs. Although several accommodations were discussed as helpful, interpersonal supports from faculty and peers were equally important in ensuring their success and inclusion in LEND. The findings from this study provide support for the expansion of self-advocacy as a formal discipline in LEND programs.

‘Global Disordering’: Practices of Reflexivity in Global Economic Governance

Abstract In this article, I offer a reinterpretation of late 20th-century ‘neo-liberal’ transformations of global economic governance. My argumentative foil is a macro-institutional interpretation of the post-1980s period in which neo-liberalism appears as programmatic institutional form and disciplinary formation. I argue that a second, and complementary, dynamic also needs to be taken into account – namely, the emergence and operationalization of a set of critical technologies for embedding practices of reflexivity within the state. I suggest, moreover, that attention to this dimension of neo-liberalization provides a new perspective on the present. I offer an interpretation of the current moment of transition as one in which a similar repertoire of neo-liberal techniques of reflexivization is, in a second iteration, being trained on the architecture of global economic governance itself.

The Financial Impact of Professional Discipline on Clinicians: A Case for Preventive Education

Regulatory organizations, such as medical licensing boards and private healthcare organizations, evaluate clinicians for lapses in professionalism involving ethics, record keeping, prescribing, and civic duties. Disciplinary action against these clinicians consists of direct penalties, loss of license or credentials, probation of practices, and reputational damage. Specialized remedial education courses often are one of the numerous stages required for a physician to regain good standing with their regulating agency. Many clinicians enrolled in such courses state that the total financial impact of disciplinary action against them is significant. This 2021 study analyzed the financial impact of professional discipline on clinicians who enrolled in a course provided by a large organization specializing in providing remedial CME on various professionalism-focused topics to satisfy disciplinary and regulatory actions. Of the 195 participants, approximately 157 participants completed the questionnaire. Using these data, we have developed hypotheses and recommendations for enhancing education or training focused on topics of professionalism to reduce the need for formal discipline at the outset. Our research shows that disciplinary action has a significant financial and emotional impact on clinicians and that preventative education, or education or training focused on topics of professionalism, can be an important tool to limit the need for disciplinary action.

Maternal educational practice and health education as a strategy to protect children: reflecting the culture of peace

Understand the influence of maternal educational practice in promoting a culture of peace and reflect on the role of health professionals as promoters of such a culture in child health care. Qualitative study, carried out with mothers of children aged zero to 12 incomplete years. The speeches were captured through a focus group held in the municipality of Nova Iguaçu. There are weaknesses related to the maternal educational process, which can be understood as violence against children. However, another finding showed that there is a desire on the part of mothers to discipline their children without repeating painful acts they have already experienced, which is an opportunity for health education to be developed with a view to deconstructing violent disciplinary forms and promoting a culture of peace. Health professionals should incorporate strategies to promote a culture of peace into their daily care practices, valuing good treatment for children and spaces for listening to mothers and caregivers, since the maternal discourse evidenced a desire to carry out the raising children

Representations of an Ebola ‘outbreak’ through Story Technologies

BackgroundAttempts to understand biosocial phenomena using scientific methods are often presented as value-neutral and objective; however, when used to reduce the complexity of open systems such as epidemics, these forms...

Origins of Forensic Anthropology in the United States

Traditional histories of forensic anthropology focus on key figures, events, and/or publications within a larger narrative of disciplinary formation and expansion. These histories typically highlight individuals such as Thomas Dwight or institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. This project represents an interdisciplinary collaboration with the goal of shedding new light onto the origins of forensic anthropology in the United States. By pulling from a number of published scholarly sources, as well as some unpublished correspondence, this project expands upon the more established historical events concerning the history of forensic anthropology. Here we argue that the origins of contemporary forensic anthropology not only trace back to the work of Wilton Krogman but that Krogman’s forensic anthropology must be understood through the life and work of his mentor, T. Wingate Todd, as well as the Hamann-Todd Collection, early efforts toward personal identification of human skeletal remains, and a complex amalgamation of US and UK influences that Krogman was exposed to through Todd’s mentorship efforts.

“Hold on to That Feeling”: Disciplinary Formations and Asian B-Sides

Abstract: This essay is a personal and self-reflective account of how disciplinary and sub-disciplinary formations operate within the field of theatre and performance studies materially, politically, and economically. Reflecting on the five years since the publication of the author’s Theatre Journal article, “Feeling in Counterpoint” (2018), the article addresses how disciplinary formations work to enact harm on racialized and minoritized scholars in the field. Writing from the perspective of the field in the United Kingdom, the essay reflects on two significant moments in the author’s experience. First, the collective writing and publication of the open letter “White Colleague Listen!” in 2020, when UK theatre, dance, and performance studies scholars of the Global Majority articulated their experiences and desires for change in the field. Second, the author’s work of community building with the New Earth Performer’s Academy, a program for emerging East and Southeast Asian actors and performers. Between these two events, the essay argues that in order to transform itself, the field must come to terms with desire—in other words, scholars must be explicit about the desire that compels them toward their subject matter and their research.

Belle da Costa Greene and the Undoing of “Medieval” Studies

AbstractThis essay outlines the current challenges facing medieval studies by focusing on the deployment of “medieval” as a category for knowledge production. It argues that as the field confronts white supremacist medievalism and pushes for a global turn, it exposes the unsustainability of the epistemologies, methodologies, and discourses that have buttressed the formation of the “medieval.” Through an analysis of the “global medieval” archive that Belle da Costa Greene curated at the Morgan Library, this essay also demonstrates how Orientalism still lurks within the global Middle Ages. The essay concludes with an introduction of the ten essays included in this special journal issue, all of which show the ways our push for epistemological progress ultimately undoes medieval studies and other disciplinary formations that have held—or been held by—it.

Embodied, caring and disciplinary: A Foucauldian reading of ‘process time’ as constitutive of the biopolitical institution of the family

‘Process time’ describes the recursive/fluid, social and embodied temporality that characterises much ‘women's work’. Though this concept has proven highly useful to feminist analyses of caring and other feminised labour, there has arguably been a tendency for authors in this area to naturalise and valorise this temporality – particularly in relation to the abstract, economic and disciplinary time of the clock. I argue that this naturalisation or valorisation of process time flattens our understanding of feminised labour, and that a feminist social theory of time must recognise the potentially disciplinary forms process time can take. As such, this paper contributes to feminist analyses of time, gender and labour by arguing that the embodied, caring and processual temporality that circulates within modern families can be understood as fundamentally disciplinary. Drawing primarily on Foucauldian theory, as well as Sharon Hays’ concept of ‘intensive mothering’, the paper argues that process time is central to the functioning of the family as a biopolitical institution, just as clock time is integral to the disciplinary mechanisms of the school, prison, barracks, etc. Specifically, it argues that the unique relations of power that circulate within the biopolitical family rely on a unique use of time: one that is intensive and oriented towards the rhythms of the physical body – that is, processual. Further, this disciplinary time is deeply and fundamentally feminine, as it operates (in its ideal form) primarily through the mother.

Logical Forms, Substitutions and Information Types

This paper explores the relation between the philosophical idea that logic is a science studying logical forms, and a mathematical feature of logical systems called the principle of uniform substitution, which is often regarded as a technical counterpart of the philosophical idea. We argue that at least in one interesting sense the principle of uniform substitution does not capture adequately the requirement that logic is a matter of form and that logical truths are formal truths. We show that some specific logical expressions can produce propositions of different kinds and the resulting diversity of informational types can lead to a justified failure of uniform substitution without undermining the view that logic is a purely formal discipline.

Reality of Deviant Behaviors of High School Students

The study aimed to evaluate the deviant behavior of high school students. Survey data from 126 students of Hanoi city. The research results show that the deviant behavior of high school student manifests at different levels but mainly at the occasional level in which the behavior is performed with more frequency than talking privately, causing disorder during school hours; Profanity, swearing; Fraud during test hours; Being late to school; Using 2-wheel motorcycles with a capacity of over 50cc. In addition, some deviant behaviors lead to serious consequences not only for the students themselves but also for those around them, such as: Drinking alcohol and then driving; Substance use; Using motorbikes and electric scooters without wearing helmets also practiced by a large number of high school students. Male students have higher standard deviation behavior than female students. Educational measures and disciplinary forms for students' deviant behaviors are not appropriate. Therefore, students, families, schools, and society need to work together to be able to manage and adjust academic behavior in high school students, thereby improving the quality of learning and spiritual life for students.

Mesocurriculum modernization of a chemical engineering program: The case of a high-impact regional university in Colombia

In Colombia there are few chemical engineering programs and those have been historically linked to the industrial development of the country, supporting the training needs for industrial development in several regions of economic importance. The southwestern Colombian region contributes with the largest industrial production in the country, and the chemical engineering program of Universidad del Valle has been the only one in the region for 78 years. The last curriculum reform took place 20 years ago and the accelerated technological change urged the adoption of deep changes in the curriculum structure. A student-centered constructivist approach was applied in the faculty-wide transformation in the mesocurriculum and microcurriculum levels, defining the so-called Sensitivities, Capacities and Competencies (SCCs) as the set of attitudes, skills and knowledge necessary for an integral performance of engineers. Those were considered from two standpoints: general and disciplinary formation. In the disciplinary level, the historic traditional pillars of chemical engineering were maintained, but taking advantage on the areas of academic research, development and innovation (R+D+I) expertise demanded by the industry around the university in addition to transversal priority areas for modern chemical engineering professionals. This contribution discussed the elements of the curriculum reform for modernizing the chemical engineering curriculum of a high-impact program in a stablished university with a regional vocation.

The Peculiar Illumination of the Polymathic Mind: Mary Somerville, William Whewell, and the Disciplinary Formation of the Sciences

Abstract: Mary Somerville (1780-1872) and William Whewell (1794-1866) both contributed to the disciplinary formation of the sciences in Great Britain in the nineteenth century: she as a synthesizer who connected the various branches of knowledge in the emerging physical sciences, and he as the first person who used the history of all branches of science to define what distinguished scientific knowledge from other kinds. Both published bodies of scholarly work whose volume and breadth astounded their contemporaries and seem almost unimaginable today. Neither is included in standard histories of science because neither made the kind of original discovery around which those histories are organized. They become much easier to comprehend in the context of polymathy, which recognizes discerning and illuminating coherence in large bodies of knowledge as an exceptional but essential creative act. Their writings reveal the adeptness of the polymathic mind in framing large bodies of knowledge through two rhetorical moves: (1) association, which connects the subject with commonly held assumptions and values and draws on aesthetic traditions that have emotional resonance; and (2) orientation, which provides organizing ideas and conceptual frameworks that establish the coherence of the subject matter and guide the reader through the text. The distinctively anti-disciplinary approach of Somerville and the fluid nature of the disciplinary categories Whewell used to organize his history suggest that the world of knowledge, including science, has never been divided into the territorial disciplinary structures that dominate higher education. Like polymaths collectively, Somerville and Whewell are apparent anomalies whose very existence challenges our notions about the role and value of specialization.

Italian ghetto stories: Toward a transnational literary history

This article examines Italian ghetto stories, which are distinguished by confusions of time, continuities, tourism, reflections on collective identities, and movements in and out, in order to outline one potential literary history. In contrast to German-language and Anglophone literary ghettos, Italian ones are generally absent as a critical category from literary debates, though they appear in works by Leon Modena, Israel Zangwill, Rainer Maria Rilke, Umberto Saba, Giorgio Bassani, Elsa Morante, Caryl Phillips, and Igiaba Scego, among others. A transnational approach can bring together works that have not been considered collectively because of disciplinary formations. Italian ghetto fictions expose the disheartening continuities of prejudice and, relatedly, have generally not been considered together because of restrictive ideas about the nation as an organizing principle.

Introduction: Domestication of War

This Special Section broadens and qualifies the terms through which the relationship between home and militarization has been understood. We do this by joining a vibrant and growing field of transdisciplinary scholars who address the militarization of everyday life by attending to domesticity and practices of domestication. We grapple with how the home naturalizes and becomes a catalyst for militarism: How do ordinary and domestic objects, technologies, spaces, and infrastructures make violence feel at home in the world? We are concerned with the domestic life of militarization as oikos: the household, habitat, and milieu of violent material relationships that are both ongoing and latent. The domestic is not just a discrete, private space; it also extends into public spaces like neighborhoods, local businesses, waste disposal infrastructures, hospices, and crop fields. Developed within an editorial process rooted in a feminist ethos, the articles collected here provide critical and alternative methodologies and disciplinary forms for considering militarism's aesthetics, affects, and modes of appearance. This collection resists conventional spatialities, temporalities, and incarnations of war while calling attention to the obscuring of violence through practices of care and marketing operations.