Interdisciplinary Seminar Research Articles

Empowering of Oncology Patients and Informal Caregivers: Analysis of an Interdisciplinary Seminar Model for Breast Cancer and Gyneco-Oncological Patients

Introduction: The interdisciplinary empowerment seminar aims to familiarize patients and informal caregivers (ICs) with supportive measures, focusing on understanding disease, therapy, and side effect management. Methods: The seminar, conducted in two courses over 1-month intervals prior to chemotherapy, included lectures, supportive materials, Q and A sessions, and individual discussions with experts in nutrition, exercise, psycho-oncology, and complementary medicine. Evaluation is based on a self-developed questionnaire and questionnaires on QoL (EORTC-QLQ-C30, BR23, CX24, OV28), anxiety and depression (HADS-D) at week 0, 5, 9, and 12. A control group with standard of care was evaluated at baseline and after 12 weeks. Results: Between October 2020 and May 2021, 19 patients and 9 ICs participated in the seminar. The control group included 20 patients. 96.4% of participants were highly satisfied with the seminar and would recommend it. QoL deterioration was more pronounced in the control group (control: week 0 = 67.6; week 12 = 61.7; intervention: week 0 = 60.8; week 12 = 60.7). This trend could not be proven by analysis of interaction (mixed ANOVA: p = 0.114). Increased confidence of participants’ knowledge about side effects was shown, and ICs reported higher confidence in knowledge and coping with the disease. Conclusions: The seminar received positive feedback and indicated increased knowledge and a trend toward better QoL preservation. Larger studies are needed for confirmation. The seminar effectively addressed unique needs, bolstering confidence and knowledge. Interdisciplinary patient and caregiver empowerment seminars can improve disease-related knowledge and positively affect QoL at the start of chemotherapy. Informational needs can be satisfied. Offering educational seminars and fostering individualized support networks can increase quality of care.

Transhumanism and One Health

Abstract In this article, we draw on an interdisciplinary seminar at the University of Basel in the spring semester 2023. The seminar firstly discussed technical transhumanism between improving human lives through technological innovation and breathtaking advances in artificial intelligence (AI). Secondly, integrative approaches to health such as One Health have a transhumanist dimension, meaning that the interaction of human and animal health contributes to human health and development. As technological and biological dimensions of transhumanism raise philosophical, anthropological and ethical questions, we ask what is specifically human and what kind of future human-technology interactions is societally acceptable. With the rapid recent development of AI, questions arise about algorithms taking over human intellectual functions. Transhumanism can be described as a current of a posthumanist turn that generally asks where the limits of the human body and also of human existence lie. From an anthropological point of view a controversial discussion is held ‘beyond the human’ about blurring of the boundaries between humans, animals and nature. The One Health approach demands that animals should not suffer in place of humans and that the health of humans, animals, plants and the environment must be promoted simultaneously. This places the One Health approach in a tension and dilemma between conflicting ethical and purely human demands for the protection and welfare of animals, as well as the legitimate demands for animal food and sheer survival in many areas of the world. A biological transhumanism certainly has less of a claim to surpass specifically human performance and thus stands less or not at all in the more gnostic technological current of technical transhumanism, which replaces human labour and suddenly achieves the ability to turn against humans. One Health impact statement Integrative approaches to health such as One Health have a transhumanist dimension, meaning that the interaction of human and animal health contributes to human health and development. The One Health approach demands that animals should not suffer in place of humans and that the health of humans, animals, plants and the environment must be promoted simultaneously. This places the One Health approach in a tension and dilemma between conflicting ethical and purely human demands for the protection and welfare of animals, as well as the legitimate demands for animal food and sheer survival in many areas of the world. Because of the high variability of the culturally-religiously shaped human-animal-environment relationship, such a transdisciplinary, participatory consensus would need to be contextually adapted, that is, to geographically, culturally-religiously distinct situations.Keywords: Transhumanism, Technical, Biological, One Health, Anthropology, Ontology, Ethics

Enlightenolatry from Peter Gay to Steven Pinker: Mass Marketing Enlightenment and the Thick Eighteenth Century

Abstract: Peter Gay's two-volume study, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (1966/69), won the National Book Award in 1966, where its tendentious version of the Enlightenment was embraced as a moderate, hopeful response to the radicalized public sphere of the 1960s. This essay argues that Gay's achievement, and the interdisciplinary seminar that he founded at Columbia University to develop it, provided a key impetus for the organization of the institutional study of eighteenth-century studies. Moreover, the constellation of ideas celebrated as the "Enlightenment" in Gay's work has provided an enduring template for twenty-first-century Enlightenolatrists like Steven Pinker, whose Enlightenment Now (2018) slavishly follows Gay's argument. The persistence of Gay's "undead text," in the sense of Lorraine Daston and Sharon Marcus's phrase (2019), suggests an additional and troubling dimension to eighteenth-century studies beyond the "wide" and "deep" eighteenth centuries as theorized by Felicity Nussbaum (2003) and Joseph Roach (2007).

Teaching communication skills in medical education : Best practice example of an interdisciplinary seminar in radiation oncology.

Communication with patients is challenging, especially in radiation oncology. Therefore, radiation oncology is particularly suited to sensitize medical students for this topic and to train them competently. We report on experiences with an innovative teaching project for fourth- and fifth-year medical students. The course, funded as an innovative teaching project by the medical faculty, was offered as an optional course for medical students in 2019 and again in 2022 after apandemic-related break. The curriculum and evaluation form were developed through atwo-stage Delphi process. The course consisted of, first, participation during counselling of patients prior to radiotherapy, mainly on topics with shared decision-making, and, second, a1-week interdisciplinary block seminar with practical exercises. The topics covered abroad spectrum of the competence areas defined in the National Competence-Based Learning Objectives Catalog for Medicine (NKLM). The number of participants was limited to approximately 15students because of the practical components. So far, 30students (all at least in the seventh semester or higher) have participated in the teaching project. The most frequent reasons for participation were the desire to acquire competence in breaking bad news and confidence in talking to patients. The overall evaluation of the course was very positive, with agrade of 1.08 + 0.28 (on ascale of 1 = totally agree to 5 = totally disagree) plus German grade1 (very good) to6 (very bad). Notably, participants' expectations regarding specific competencies (e.g., breaking bad news) were also met. Although the evaluation results cannot be generalized to the entirety of medical students due to the limited number of voluntary participants, the very positive evaluation shows the need for such projects among students and can also be seen as an indication that radiation oncology as apatient-centered discipline is particularly well suited to teach medical communication.

"We are also land that populates”: the umbanda as a renegaded face of the brazilian cultural identity

This article is a study presented at the”1st Interdisciplinary Seminar on Society and Culture and deals about the Brazilian national identity through the prism of Umbanda religiosity, which we sought to present as an important face of the cultural identity built in Brazil from the 19th century onwards, despite being currently relegated to the condition of inferiority, mainly for displaying in its foundations practices related to Afro-Indian ethnicities that, in an unquestionable way, contributed substantially in the process of identity construction of Brazilian society. It is, therefore, a bibliographic research of a qualitative nature that, in the consultation of literature, scientific articles and numerical-documentary data, demonstrated the repetition of the myth of miscegenation in the present day regarding religious intolerance to the detriment of Umbanda practitioners.

Students experience the effects of climate change on children's health in role play and develop strategies for medical work - an interactive seminar.

This project report describes the development and evaluation of an interactive seminar on the topic "medical effects of climate change on children's health". The learning objectives are learning the basics and the direct and indirect connections between climate change and children's health. Future scenarios for affected children, parents and doctors are developed interactively. Subsequently, communication strategies concerning climate change are discussed so that students identify and analyze possibilities to become active. The seminar was offered as an obligatory seminar for a total of 128 third-year medical students with one appointment of 45 minutes per course group as part of the interdisciplinary seminar series "Environmental Medicine". A course group consisted of 14 to 18 students. The seminar for the 2020 summer semester was developed as part of the interdisciplinary field of environmental medicine with the special feature of an interactive role play. The role play intends to give the students the opportunity to put themselves in the situation of affected children, parents and doctors of the future in order to develop detailed solution strategies. From 2020 to 2021, the seminar took place as online self-study due to the lockdown requirements. Since winter semester 2021/22, the seminar was held as an attendance event for the first time, although the switch to an online presence seminar with obligatory attendance had to take place after four seminar dates due to renewed lockdown requirements, which also took place four times. The evaluated results here refer to a total of eight dates in the winter semester 2021/22 and were carried out using a specially developed questionnaire, which was filled out voluntarily and anonymously by the students immediately after the respective seminar date. An overall grade as well as the appropriateness of the time and content of lectures and role play were asked for. Free text answers were possible for each question. A total of 83 questionnaires were evaluated, 54 of which were from the four seminars in attendance, 15 were from the four online presence seminars that took place as an online live stream. The evaluation of the seminar resulted in an average grade of 1.7 for the face-to-face seminars and 1.9 for the online seminars. Content-related comments in the free-text answers addressed the desire for concrete solution strategies, more time for discussions and a more in-depth study of the topic. Numerous positive responses described the seminar as "very exciting", "good food for thought", "interesting and important topic". There is a very high interest on the topic of "climate change & health" among students There is an obvious need to integrate the topic on a larger scale into medical education. Ideally, the focus on children's health should be an integral part of the pediatric curriculum.

Peasant Studies As a New Direction in Modern Studies of Russian Agrarian History

This article describes the circumstances under which a permanent interdisciplinary international seminar “Modern Concepts of Agrarian Development” arose in 1992. The roles of the Russian historian V.P. Danilov at the Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences (IRH RAS) and the English historian-sociologist T. Shanin (Manchester University, Britain), as well as the role of the problems discussed at the meetings at the seminar and the publication of the seminar’s materials by the journal Otechestvennayaistoriya (Russian History) in the development of a new direction in Russian agrarian historical research, in the creation of this forum are shown. Suggestions are made about why the methodological approaches that gained popularity in the 1960s in Western Peasant Studies are difficult to apply to Russian-language historical publications on agrarian issues. An idea is given of some works of modern domestic historians that can rightfully be attributed to the direction of research called peasant studies.

Editor’s Introduction

Editor’s Introduction

Exploring the Psychological Aspects of Palliative Care: Lessons Learned from an Interdisciplinary Seminar of Experts.

Palliative care has been shown to help patients live well with serious illness, but the specific psychological factors that contribute to this benefit remain investigational. Although support of patient coping has emerged as a likely factor, it is unclear how palliative care helps patients to cope with serious illness. The therapeutic relationship has been proposed as a key element in beneficial patient outcomes, possibly undergirding effective patient and family coping. Understanding the distress of our patients with psychological depth requires the input of varied clinicians and thinkers. The complex conceptual model we developed draws upon the contributions of medicine, nursing, psychology, spiritual care, and social work disciplines. To elucidate these issues, we convened an interdisciplinary seminar of content experts to explore the psychological components of palliative care practice. "Healing Beyond the Cure: Exploring the Psychodynamic Aspects of Palliative Care" was held in May 2019 at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Over two days, the working group explored these essential elements of successful palliative care encounters through lecture and open discussion. This special report describes the key psychological aspects of palliative care that we believe underlie optimal adaptive coping in palliative care patients. We also outline key areas for further development in palliative care research, education, and clinical practice. The discussion held at this meeting became the basis for a planned series of articles on the psychological elements of palliative care that will be published in the Journal of Palliative Medicine on a monthly basis during the fall and winter of 2021-2022.

When Scientific Knowledge and Ignorance Make It Difficult to Improve Occupational Health: A French and European Perspective.

This article analyzes the consequences of the increasing reference to scientific expertise in the decision and implementation process of occupational health policy. Based on examples (exposure limits and attributable fractions) taken from an interdisciplinary seminar conducted in 2014 to 2015 in France, it shows how the measurement or regulation of a problem through biomedicine-based tools produces blind spots. It also uses a case study to show the contradictions between scientific and academic aims and public health intervention. Other indirect implications are also examined, such as the limitation of trade unions' scope for action. Finally, the article suggests launching a broad political debate accessible to nonspecialists about collective occupational health issues-a dialogue made difficult by the rise of the afore-mentioned techno-scientific perspective.

Integrating Design Thinking in Teacher Education: Student Teachers Develop Learning Scenarios for Elementary Schools

This article describes the concept and the implementation of an interdisciplinary seminar that was held at the University of Education in Freiburg, Germany. Student teachers for elementary school subjects were first taught in Design Thinking. Then they used their acquired knowledge to create learning scenarios for the subjects Art/Crafts and General Science and Social Studies. The article highlights the results and offers the opportunity to discuss the potentials of Design Thinking with regard to its transfer to classroom and teacher education against the background of fostering children’s creativity, problem-solving skills, and collaborative work.

Co-Creation in the Classroom: Challenge, Community, and Collaboration

As strategies for co-creation in teaching and learning, the democratic classroom and students-as-partners pedagogies seek to empower students by equally distributing the responsibilities of decision-making across the students and instructors in a class. In this essay, we describe and analyze how students in a second-year interdisciplinary seminar responded to and engaged with these pedagogies, as well as how they articulated perceived personal and intellectual change in connection with the approaches used. We suggest that participants created a course that embraces the principles of self-directed and communal learning, equipping students with skills and approaches for navigating not just their academic lives but also their lives beyond the walls of the classroom.

Directions in Sociolinguistics: Report on an Interdisciplinary Seminar

Abstract A 1964 summer seminar hosted by the SSRC’s Committee on Sociolinguistics highlighted tensions between sociology and linguistics when scholars gathered to address how their disciplines can deepen research on language’s impact on society. For example, sociologists questioned linguistics’ lack of definition for language or dialect while linguists raised concerns about sociology’s reliance on large quantified data. However, by the end of the seminar, the scholars agreed the encounter had raised important questions and opened new paths of investigation through both sociological and linguistic approaches, including the study of language and social stratification, multilingualism, and language standardization.

“Сurrent Issues of Neuroethics”: Panel Discussion Chronicles (October 30, 2019)

On October 30, 2019, the Moscow campus of the Higher School of Economics hosted the round table "Current problems of neuroethics". This round table organized by the School of Philosophy of the Higher School of Economics and the scientific Council of the RAS Presidium on artificial intelligence methodology. The round table was timed to coincide with the 55th meeting of the international interdisciplinary seminar "Neurophilosophy".

Alteridad de género y crítica

Este artículo es el resultado de la contribución del Seminario Interdisciplinario de Investigación “Alteridad y exclusiones” al pensamiento de lo contemporáneo en crisis. Se plantea como un recorrido por la terminología crítico-teórica a través de la cual el Seminario sostuvo y sostiene un prolífico debate con los movimientos y organizaciones de activistas sociales del feminismo. Se argumenta que el vocabulario crítico enunciado, producto de innumerables discusiones, es el vehículo de las descripciones o enunciados con carácter teórico, además de la base para las proposiciones que desde las humanidades críticas se dirigen a resolver o disolver las cuestiones que la actualidad nos demanda como pensadores y pensadoras.

Can Rationality in Economics and Sociology be Framed under Unified Common Principles?

In the 1939–1940 academic year, a small informal group of scholars and students conducted an interdisciplinary seminar on “Rationality in the Social Sciences” at Harvard University. Joseph Schumpeter and Talcott Parsons were the leading keynote speakers, and many of the participants were figures already well known or destined to become famous, such as Alfred Schutz (phenomenology), Rainer Schickele (economics), Abram Bergson, Gottfried Haberler, Wassily Leontief, and Paul Sweezy. The materia...

‘There is a work in the interpretation of the work’

ABSTRACTThis paper provides brief context and a critical overview of the video presented as an integral part of this publication. In one hour the video documents excerpts from over five hours of an interdisciplinary seminar at Summerhall in Edinburgh, Scotland on 1 October 2016. The group assembled to consider a cluster of three post-industrial shale oil bings: as an artwork, as a form with positive and negative aesthetic value, as a living landscape and an ecosystem, and as a national heritage site. We wanted to talk about the bings in the context of mining and waste pile recovery schemes from the point of view of art and its ability to reveal divergent public interests. Furthermore we wanted to consider the bings as a unique living ecological habitat. By embracing an interdisciplinary network approach to the conflicted meanings of one specific post-industrial landscape, we intended to explore positive and negative aesthetics, ethics and moral philosophy to better understand how competing meanings reveal, complement or overshadow historic judgements, current perceptions and future values.

PESQUISA EM LITERATURA E INTERDISCIPLINARIDADE: UM RELATO DE EXPERIÊNCIA NA FORMAÇÃO DOCENTE EAD

The curricular organization of the distance learning course of the IFPB offers the components Interdisciplinary Seminar I, II, III and IV, with the aim that the teachers in initial formation develop research that articulate the theories worked in the graduation with the experience in the school environment. In view of the importance of these components for the development of critical thinking and the research vocation that should reside in the teacher, in this research, we will describe, through an experience report, how the Interdisciplinary Seminars II and IV dedicated to the Literature. As specific objectives, we will present its prediction in the Pedagogical Project; we will indicate how these curricular components are presented to undergraduates; and we will reflect on his contribution to the training of ODL trainee. The methodology used will be descriptive-interpretative qualitative, in which, from the study of the Pedagogical Project and the presentation of the discipline in the virtual learning environment - Moodle Platform - we will present the operation of the Interdisciplinary Seminar II and IV component, as well as using the contextual and structural description for the experience report. As a result, it is possible to observe that, through Interdisciplinary Seminars, undergraduates are introduced into the field of scientific research, since they receive, during the guidelines that precede the final product of the component - the results of the investigation - instructions both regarding aspects of the research, as well as, after the research completed, should proceed with the presentation in a similar way to the oral communications so frequent in academic events.

Thinking with Literature: Towards a Cognitive Criticism by Terence Cave

Reviewed by: Thinking with Literature: Towards a Cognitive Criticism by Terence Cave Jiang Lei (bio) and William Baker (bio) Terence Cave. Thinking with Literature: Towards a Cognitive Criticism. Oxford UP, 2016. xiii +199 pp., $39.95. The winner of the 2009 Balzan Foundation Prize for “Literature since 1500,” Terence Cave is a specialist in early modern French literature, thought, and culture and formerly the director of the Balzan Interdisciplinary Seminar “Literature as an Object of Knowledge,” based at the St John’s College Oxford Research Centre. A product of Cave’s engagement with the Seminar is his pioneering work Thinking with Literature: Towards a Cognitive Criticism that concisely explicates the concepts of cognitive literary criticism. The book is expansive in scope but focuses on certain innovative approaches, some of which, for instance “kinesis,” and “relevance theory (cognitive pragmatics),” (198–99), have so far been understated in literary criticism. For Terence Cave, literature is perceived as “an object of anthropological and cognitive study, a human phenomenon operating within the constraints of human phylogenetic and cultural evolution” (139). In order to make literary studies cognitively informed, Cave believes that the study of literature should be placed under an interdisciplinary scope, with discussion drawing upon cognitive linguistics and neurological methodology. Cave claims that his book is written for anyone who is interested in reading literature; however, it is “neither an introductory handbook, nor a systematic account of one more cognitive approaches to literature” (vi). Instead, the study renders insightful ideas and fundamental principles or perspectives as it explores theories or arguments of cognitive approaches to literature to renew the understanding of specific texts. [End Page 537] In his initial chapter, appositely titled “Openings” (1–11), Cave examines, in addition to reviewing what he is going to do in subsequent chapters, specific basic issues of cognitive studies and pays particular attention to fresh perspectives for literary studies. These include the study of “the cognitive environment of the reader” (5), and “ecologies of the imagination” (6–7). In his detailed second chapter, “Cognitive Conversations” (12–31), Cave brings to literary study the discourse of linguistics and cognitive science. In this chapter, Cave uses “the notion of ‘mirror neurons’ or ‘motor resonance’ or ‘mind reading’” borrowed from neurological or cognitive psychological science in order to serve as new openings for use in literary study. Sensitive to the ramifications of his borrowings from other fields of inquiry, Cave admits there are dangers in bringing such ideas to literary criticism. He writes that he “can only adopt [them] if one acknowledges that this . . . mode of transfer risks becoming a kind of pirate raid in which one grabs some interesting-sounding ideas and carries them off for consumption on home territory” (17)—cognitive literary criticism. The idea that literature is, after all, the art of language that allows the possibility of applying linguistic theory to literary studies is deeply rooted in Cave’s ideas. To amplify this, Cave utilizes “cognitive pragmatics” and in particular “Relevance Theory” proposed by Paul Grice “on the logic of conversation” (24) in his Studies in the Way of Words published by Harvard University Press in 1989 and developed by Deirdre Wilson and Dan Sperber in the second edition of their Relevance: Communication and Cognition (Blackwell, 1995). The engagement with “Relevance Theory” and other cognitive theories enables Cave to create useful fresh terminologies for literary studies. The term “Kinesis, or motor resonance” (28–30) is drawn upon from Kinetics, referring to a neutral readiness to perform similar actions naturally arising when reading words or lines offered by the literary works. In other words, Kinesis is “a faint but distinct echo in the reader’s own motor response system of what it takes in sensorimotor terms to perform a highly specific gesture” (29). It is subsequently applied to illuminate passages from W. B. Yeats’s “The Balloon of the Mind” (38–40). Another useful term is “Cognitive Fluidity,” by which Cave means “the ability to shift between different mental representations, imagine alternative possibilities, [and] predict possible outcomes” (69). Cave’s third chapter (32–45) is mainly a close reading of Yeats’s poem “The Balloon of the Mind.” In his meticulous analysis of the single-quatrain...

Francisco Murillo Ferrol y los primeros estudios de ciencia política y sociología en la Universidad de Valencia = Francisco Murillo Ferrol and the First Studies of Political Science and Sociology at the University of Valencia

Resumen: Francisco Murillo Ferrol fue catedrático de derecho político en la Universidad de Valencia desde su acceso a la cátedra, en 1952, hasta su marcha a la Universidad de Granada en 1961. Fue el primer catedrático estable que tuvo la disciplina en Valencia desde 1932. Cuando llega, es un profesor formado en la filosofía del derecho y que había realizado algunas reflexiones sobre la teoría del Estado desde perspectivas históricas y clásicas. Sus ocho años y medio en Valencia fueron de intensa actividad: dirigió el colegio mayor “Luis Vives”; participó intensamente en la vida académica de la Facultad; impulsó un Seminario interdisciplinar de ciencias sociales centrado en la sociología y la ciencia política, cuyas corrientes principales en Europa y América empezó a introducir; creó una gran biblioteca sobre estas materias; animó un primer grupo de discípulos; etc. El presente estudio muestra toda esa actividad, al tiempo que hace una descripción de los principales rasgos de la personalidad del profesor, como su tolerancia política y personal, su vigorosa personalidad intelectual, caracterizada por una actitud crítica radical, su escepticismo rayano en el pesimismo y, sobre todo, su firme vocación docente, que le llevó a ser definido como “un maestro en tiempo de patronos”.Palabras clave: Universidad franquista, Murillo Ferrol, derecho político, ciencia política, sociología.Abstract: Francisco Murillo Ferrol was a professor of political law at the University of Valencia from his access to the chair in 1952, until his departure to the University of Granada in 1961. He was the first stable profesor this discipline had in Valencia since 1932. When arriving, he was a professor trained in philosophy of law who had done some reflections on the theory of the State from historical and classical perspectives. His eight and a half years in Valencia show an intense activity: he was the director of the college “Luis Vives”; he participated intensely in the academic life of the faculty; he promoted an interdisciplinary seminar on social sciences focused on sociology and political science, whose main currents in Europe and America he began to introduce; he created a large library on these matters and encouraged a first group of disciples; etc. The present study shows all this activity, as well as a description of the main features of the professor’s personality, such as his political and personal tolerance, his vigorous intelectual personality, characterized by a radical critical attitude, his scepticism bordering on pessimism and, above all, his strong vocation towards teaching, which led him to be defined as “a master in an age of bosses”.Keywords: Francoist university, Murillo Ferrol, political law, political science, sociology.