"Interdisciplinarity" is widely praised in modern academe for its apparent ability to generate important research results and contribute to scholarly innovation. This essay examines a crucial case of interdisciplinary work in the humanities and social sciences: the area studies complex that emerged in the United States after World War II. Examining both celebrations and critiques of area studies, this essay concludes that the enterprise made a major contribution to national life not through the production of scholarship (the usual focus of historians of higher education) but through the innovative model of undergraduate teaching and graduate training that expanded the geographic and linguistic horizons of American undergraduate and graduate life. A final section of the essay suggests the relevance of this pedagogical focus for contemporary debates about the future of area studies.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 16 January 2015.
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#19,869,877
of 24,417,958 outputs
Outputs from Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
#459
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#273,393
of 371,766 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
#4
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Altmetric has tracked 24,417,958 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 10th percentile – i.e., 10% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 513 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 5.5. This one is in the 3rd percentile – i.e., 3% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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