Week 3: Xuxa's Adventures In Finding Inter/Transdisciplinary Research Work In Art History

The funny thing about looking for inter/transdisciplinary articles in art history was how many more articles I found that were crossing from a home discipline to art history rather than vice-versa. One article in particular, found in the journal Hispania called "Teaching Language Skills and Cultural Awareness with Spanish Paintings", was written by a languages professor who combined language pedagogy with art historical works as examples. On the flip side, there was an art historical article, in the journal Geographical Review called "Marcel Duchamp's Art and the Geography of Modern Paris", which was written by an art history professor who crossed over to geography to be able to talk about how Duchamp's readymade works could be read as a recreation of Parisian geography within the artist's New York studio. 

What I liked about these two articles was seeing two models for inter/transdiciplinary research of my own. Here were two people well versed in their own fields who crossed over to other fields fairly successfully (from my observation) by looking at their own fields in a different way: how else can we teach languages beyond using words? How else can we understand artistic production beyond the relationship between the artist and his materials to considering the materials and their origins in relation to the artist's origins? 

What got me thinking in these articles is the more difficult question of how do I start making those connections for myself? What kinds of questions am I going to have to/learn to ask to be able to see my own field in a new or different way than others within it have considered it? Can I actually learn how to ask those kinds of questions or will they come after years of specializing to the point where I know the field like the back of my hand?