Pembroke Research Seminar – The Meanings of Merit

Catalog description

This seminar will consider how ideas about intellectual value and expertise, in other words, myths of merit, are entangled with divisions of labor and categories of difference. While gender will take a central place in our discussions, we will also explore how the creation of knowledge and the authority to claim it are linked to race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality. We will examine how critiques of merit have shaped work produced in a variety of disciplines and interdisciplinary fields. Our discussions will explore how different fields conceptualize value and expertise in the context of larger, synthetic discussions about questions of merit. We will draw on work from a range of fields in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. We will engage with an interdisciplinary array of critical scholarship, as well as works of literature, film, visual art, and performance.