Discipline Awareness Project:
COMPARISON OF DISCIPLINES,
AND SCHOLARSHIP DEFINED
Amy Glen and Jim Dooley
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From Amy’s Perspective The fields of English, History and Religion are all compatible fields that correlate well with one another. All three fields go about scholarly research the same way - primary and secondary sources are used to support a scholar’s position on an argument, and in-text citations are well used to support the argument being made. All three fields strive to be objective and provide a relatively balanced argument. The main differences between these fields is the subject matter of each field - these fields, however, often overlap one another. A main difference between these fields is the citation styles used. The field of English uses MLA citation style while the field of History uses Chicago-style citation. The field of Religion, on the other hand, is flexible with citation styles, and MLA, APA and Chicago-style are all acceptable forms of citation. Gina is very interested in history and focuses mainly on colonial history and history of exploration. While she mainly focuses on historical themes and the historic method of research, she sometimes encounters religion when studying colonial history (shift from Anglican Church to new denominations of Christianity). Jim is interested in religious studies and focuses on how the example of the justification of holy war in the Crusades is a lasting trend that continues to impact people today. My interests in the field of English includes British literature (Jane Austen and Charles Dickens are two of my favorites), creative writing, and eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century literature. When conducting research on a literary work, I have to take into consideration the historic and religious viewpoints that impacted the author. For example, in Jane Austen novels, you will often hear references to history (ex: Fanny Price of Mansfield Park) and religion (ex: Michaelmas celebration in Pride & Prejudice).
I saw quite a bit of commonality between our interests and the ways we approached our respective disciplines. All of us are essentially active in the field of history – American, European, or Religious – and two of us are actually history majors. Two of us are English majors with a shared interest in certain authors, although we are pursuing different concentrations. (Amy is focusing on creative writing, and my literary focus is on early modern British literature.) We seemed genuinely interested in each other’s fields and projects, and we worked well together; given more time, we could have built considerably upon these commonalities. Those of us who are in the fields of history and literature are interested in the stories we as members of a certain society tell each other. We want to find out what “really happened,” we want to see a little bit beyond the obvious, and we want to pass along new stories as well as the old ones. Historians look at documents, identify trends, and make connections between events. Scholars of literature read carefully to see how authors tell old stories in new ways to highlight new ideas and convey new meanings, and to reflect their own understanding of the world in which they find themselves. In this regard, history and literary art are intertwined; history informs the literature, and literature can preserve and change the world.
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From Amy’s Perspective Scholarship in the field of English is about understanding the human condition through the study of written and orally spoken works. Scholars in the field of English try to help others understand different cultures, different viewpoints, the past and present, and the change and evolution of the human perspective through an objective lens. Scholarship in the field of History is about understanding the human past and its impact on people today. Scholarship in the field of religion is about understanding the changing and evolving history of religion throughout history and how it impacts our understanding our understanding of religion today.
Scholarship in the multidisciplinary field of Religious Studies is rooted in the objective description of the individual religious tradition. Each tradition, or faith, emerges from a society in a certain way and helps define that society. To that extent, one religion is not viewed by scholars as being “correct” while another is “incorrect.” As societies change, the religious traditions generally change, as well. My own interests are the history of religions and the sociology of religion; scholars in these fields pay particular attention to the sacred texts and stories, especially how they evolve over long periods of time. The main emphasis is to describe the traditions accurately and honestly, without trying to make them appear to be other than they are.
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