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A recent UCLA graduate seminar on the science of politics in Early America was about much more than the name suggests.

The subject matter — the emergence of a branch of political philosophy based on early modern natural science in pre-1900 American literature — was compelling in its own right. But one unusual aspect of the course is how English Professor Alex Mazzaferro used the material: to inspire students to generate original scholarly projects by combining seemingly disparate academic disciplines — like, say, science and politics.

“The larger goal of the course was to use one example of interdisciplinary inquiry to aid students working on a variety of literary periods and topics in developing original research projects by bringing together fields that do not often speak to one another,” Mazzaferro said. “The hope was that uncovering the shared concerns and methods of seemingly unrelated disciplines would enable these rising scholars to ask new questions, build new audiences and reach new conclusions — in other words, the result would be greater than the sum of its parts.”

Among the students in the seminar this academic year were Kim Hu, Rosalind Shoopmann and Sunny Xiaoyang Hua, all doctoral students in English. Each of them said the seminar gave them new ways to approach their own research.

“The class got me feeling lost in the best way,” Hua said. “There’s a lot that I didn’t know, but now I want to know. That’s the beauty of what we call interdisciplinarity, but it’s actually just human curiosity.”

We asked the students for their reflections on how the seminar’s interdisciplinary focus shaped their thinking.

Read the full story.

Pictured above: Rosalind Shoopmann, Kim Hu and Sunny Xiaoyang Hua with Professor Alex Mazzaferro in the Grace M. Hunt Memorial English Reading Room in Kaplan Hall

Photo credit: Sean Brenner/UCLA Humanities