In Fall 2017, Nevena Stojanovic, Lecturer in the English Department at WVU, had the honor to participate as a keynote and honorary guest speaker at two global interdisciplinary conferences, organized by Advena World and held in the Washington, DC, metro-area. Interdisciplinary research and interdisciplinary symposia are of paramount importance for higher education in the 21st century.
On Oct. 27, Stojanovic served as the Keynote Speaker at the 2017 Global Conference on Humanities, Literatures, Cultures, and Arts. She delivered a talk on teaching research and argumentation in undergraduate courses on literature. Her lecture was based on her reflections on teaching nineteenth-century transatlantic authors, and she was delighted to see that her colleagues in other academic disciplines had similar experiences with teaching cultural texts of the past. Her emphasis on transmediation in teaching old literary genres received approval from scholars in the diverse fields such as philosophy, history, communications, aesthetics, etc. This academic work is of increasing importance as it recasts cultural texts in a different medium, enabling students to unpack the ideological coding embedded in the text.
Stojanovic was also invited to be an Honorary Guest Speaker at the Dec. 1 Global Conference on Education, Research, and Policy, where she presented her theoretical work on digital humanities and radical performance art. Interacting with specialists focused on higher education, leadership, cybersecurity, ethics, and political science, Stojanovic was thrilled by the connections among these fields, particularly through their common emphasis on an individual’s sphere of influence, community-based scholarship, and innovative leadership.
Both lectures demonstrate the ongoing need and advantages of interdisciplinary research and teaching.
For more information, contact Stojanovic at Nevena.Stojanovic@mail.wvu.edu.