UNDISCIPLINED DESIGNING YOUR OWN MAJOR

By Eric Santomauro-Stenzel ‘24

Like many of us, one of Hamilton’s strongest draws for me was the open curriculum. Unmitigated freedom to explore and connect new subjects, liberty from the tyranny of a math class, and the promise to “Know Thyself.” In a word, Hamilton’s open curriculum offered transcendence.

To whatever extent the marketing material is true, it’s interdisciplinarily.

Disciplines are a social construct; that at Hamilton Marx is more often referenced in critical theory classes than economics courses isn’t a natural fact of the universe. The boundaries between disciplines often enforce what scholarship is “legitimate” in the eyes of the academy. A professor of mine once told our class that they would like to include more citations from other disciplines in their research, but doing so would harm their ability to seek jobs in discipline-based academic departments. In other words, full-time academics are structurally disincentivized from drawing connections between their colleagues’ work and their own. Maybe that means we should try to fill the gaps, or more conspiratorially, break the boundaries.

As undergraduates, we are lucky to have the opportunity to explore more freely. Though I came into Hamilton wanting to major in government, I soon realized the boundaries of the government discipline largely precluded studies of social change via other avenues than electoral politics, as well as the practical application of such strategies. Instead, I decided to pursue an interdisciplinary concentration that would enable me to study how societies change more broadly.

A successful interdisciplinary concentration application explains why all included disciplines are insufficient on their own, as well as the unique benefit each one offers. Interdisciplinary work is about deconstructing and reconstructing, looking at issues from a variety of vantage points, and appreciating the vibrancy of combining it all into one picture. For me, a pallette of africana studies, anthropology, government, and sociology painted “social movements & community organizing.”

What application might the ethnographic research skills I gained from anthropology be able to do for me in political science? How might theories on collective action from sociology offer insight into historical Black rebellions? Questions like these are both readily prompted and answered through an interdisciplinary concentration. I’ve found that the concentration, along with a healthy dose of independent study courses (which are also amazing), has encouraged an interdisciplinary mindset in general. By design, I consider my courses as in relationship to one another rather than as blocked off and atomized. This semester, as I take

AFRST - Global Black Rebellions, ENVST - Environmental Social Movements, INTER - Contemporary Social Movement Theory, and SOC - Populism, I see concepts that are mirrored between classes. These connected concepts offer a more holistic learning experience that reinforces lessons and encourages depth of understanding.

One of the few drawbacks, however, is that you must select specific courses. Hamilton’s structure requires students to have every single course selected when you submit the application. While you may switch out two later on, anything beyond that requires approval again. Perhaps Hamilton isn’t wrong to want students to be very confident in designing their own major, but it does add rigidity to a concentration that is otherwise very open.

Another drawback is how it impacts a student’s ability to minor or double major, especially if the inter- disciplinary concentration includes several departments and you have a targeted set of interests. In another world, I might have liked to minor or even major in any one of the specific disciplines I included in my concentration, but now that would require taking additional courses since they cannot count towards two degrees.

These limitations are nothing in comparison to the liberating feeling of being able to control the direction of my own education to a greater extent than ever before. For those of us disillusioned with the arbitrary categories placed onto learning by the Western academy, interdisciplinary concentrations offer a rare pedagogical respite, a place to chart our own course and embrace the diversity of human knowledge.