Statement of
Teaching Philosophy and Research Interests
M. H. (Behrooz) Tamdgidi, Ph.D.
I think a prerequisite
for excellence in teaching and research is transcending their spatiotemporal
dualism. Research and teaching, i.e., creation and communication of
knowledge, are inseparable from one another. Good teaching is always
a research endeavor, and good research always a teaching experience,
reflectively and/or with others. It is no wonder that we often learn
more about a subject when we teach it, or better teach it when we are
ourselves learning it anew. I see the relation of the two not in terms
of a dualism, but in terms of the dialectics of part and whole. Which
is part and which whole depends on institutional space and time—I
do not think either is more important than the other. The dialectical
part/whole approach to teaching and research introduces a spatiotemporal
simultaneity to the two otherwise dualised aspects, helping to restore
the integrity of the educational process as a creative experience.
My concern with
spatiotemporality in social analysis and pedagogy dates back to my undergraduate
studies at U.C. Berkeley where I received a liberal arts training in
architecture in the College of Environmental Design. My graduate studies
in sociology at SUNY-Binghamton, known for its world-systems studies
concentration, were guided by an interest in the dialectics of long-term,
large-scale social change and lifelong dynamics of individual self-knowledge.
I have had a long-standing teaching and research interest in the spatiotemporal
dialectics of micro and macro social processes, extending the inquiry
in both directions to the study of how here-and-now self-identities
and world-historical social structures constitute one another. Omar
Khayyam's poetry has always been a great inspiration for me in this
regard.
The sociology of
self-knowledge and human architecture—two fields I initiated as
part of my dissertation research—are aimed at the construction
of new conceptual and curricular landscapes for the pursuit of my research
and teaching interests as outlined above. My overall disciplinary interest
in the sociology of knowledge can be broken down into its component
interests in self and society on one hand, and world-historical and
comparative sociology on the other hand, aided by a sensitivity to matters
of spatiotemporality in social analysis, and informed by a reflexive
preoccupation with micro-macro sociological theories and the dialectical
method. I am also interested in psychohistory, broadly defined, because
of its acknowledgment of the challenge posed by individual and collective
subconscious factors in bringing about historical knowledge and change.
This is explored in the context of a research interest in the study
of failing ideological and political practices in social institutions,
movements, and revolutions, with an eye on the newly revitalized east-west
civilizational discourse. My approach to the study of social stratification
is utopystic, i.e., I find it more fruitful to explore class, gender,
racial, ethnic, and other inequalities as part of an overall search
for alternative paths to social de-stratification within a simultaneously
micro and macro, reflexive and global, framework. My studies in alternative
utopystic theorizing and practices are guided by a special interest
in the comparative/integrative study of utopian, mystical, and academic
movements emergent from philosophical, religious, and scientific paradigms.
I see each of my
classes as a makeshift, semester-long, “research working group”
involvement, during which students are treated as more or less young
research scholars engaged in a most important research undertaking:
understanding (and perhaps changing) their selves within a micro/macro
sociological framework. The classroom is thereby transformed into a
research collective of scholars whose central goal in the semester is
to critically develop new knowledges about (and perhaps realities in)
their globally constituted selves. Audiovisual, and especially feature
film, materials are used to invoke not only intellectual but also emotional
and sensual experiences into the self-interpretive and transformative
learning process. This pedagogical technique I apply in all of my sociology
classes, the difference among them being the particular subject matter
or readings assigned to each course. It works each time. In each class,
students come to know themselves differently from the vantage point
of that particular subject matter set in a global context. The sociology
of self-knowledge and human architecture, as advanced in my work, involve
both explanatory as well as creative practices. The knowledge that results
in the process of actual and persistent pursuit of this pedagogy across
multiple course enrollments provides at the same time a fertile landscape
for tearing down walls of class, gender, race, ethnic, religious, national,
age, and disability alienations in favor of building integrative, globally
and historically self-reflective, identities.
To accommodate my
teaching and research interests, and especially to make possible the
communication to others of my work and those of my students and colleagues,
I have initiated an academic journal, a personal research center, and
a publishing press and printshop which are represented in various pages
of this website. My interests in architecture and book/publication design
continually shape both the substance and expressive forms of my sociological
pursuits. I believe teaching and research must both be concerned with
matters of creativity—in substance and form, as well as expression.
Art is the ultimate hope, in my view, beyond the valuable but one-sided
and fragmented contributions of religion, science, and philosophy. Only
art can bring them together in new ways in favor of the good life. I
think this is the key to understanding Khayyam's message.
Below are some of
my research questions serving the broader framework of exercising my
teaching philosophy.
Research on utopianism:
How can we go beyond ideological rhetoric, religious and scientific,
in assessing the real contributions and shortcomings of the utopian
tradition? How does the utopian mode of challenge to the status quo
differ from the “antisystemic” variants? Many utopian experiments
(such as that of the so-called “utopian socialists”) were
much more real and concrete undertakings in explorations of alternative
social arrangements than many contemporary party manifestos and platforms.
Can one in fact find evidence that utopianism, i.e., building the alternative
society in the here and now (imaginatively and/or experimentally, by
example), has been not an exception but in fact the norm in previous
transitions in historical modes of production? Can we develop new, more
appreciative, research agenda in world-historical explorations of utopian
movements? Can we go beyond ideological rhetoric of “antisystemicity”
and develop our notions and criteria of what is really antisystemic
or not using historically inductive, rather than merely deductive, methods
of reasoning and research? Can we develop new world-historical typologies
of utopian movements based on the ways in which they have emerged from
various philosophical, religious, scientific, and humanist paradigms
of social change?
Research on mysticism:
How can contributions of mystical teachings to self-knowledge and change
be interpreted in sociological terms, particularly in terms of multiplicities
of selves and roles in contemporary society? How can we constructively
engage with and learn from the substantively rational elements in the
world’s mystical teachings and movements without legitimizing and
reproducing long-ingrained asymmetrical and dependent modalities governing
their teacher-student relationships? What shapes and forms have mystical
teachings and their student-teacher modalities taken across time and
space in world-history? Have there been, or are there emerging, alternative
approaches and experimentations in the mystical tradition which avoid
such asymmetrical interpersonal structures in the search for transcendental
self and divine knowledge and experience? What impacts have new textual,
audiovisual, and electronic/internet technologies made on further rigidification
and/or transformation of substantive contents and organizational forms
of mysticism? How has “globalization” and the age of information
affected the secretive, isolationist, and “mystical” tendencies
among various mystical schools?
Research on science
and the academy: Why do we give/receive “credit” for learning
about everything in the universe in our universities and classrooms,
except for the study of our own individual selves? How can we critically
assimilate the best contributions of mystical and utopian traditions
into the confines of our formal and informal, on and off campus, “classrooms”
while discarding their irrational elements? How can we engage students
and ourselves in new, 21st century, discourses on “know thy self
and world”? The study of theories of “self and society”
still cannot replace engaged undertakings by the student to critically
examine and study her or his own selves in everyday life. How can we
build encouraging and supportive educational and curricular environments
in schools and programs for such undertakings? How can we engage students
in creative intellectual and experimental explorations and constructions
of “future” de-alienated and more egalitarian social arrangements
beginning in the “classrooms” of their schools, universities,
homes, and peer groups, here and now? What ontological, epistemological,
methodological, theoretical, and historical-interpretative impediments
are preventing us from realizing that the alternative self and social
arrangements need also to be “socially constructed” here and
now—rather than merely promised in political platforms for a future
society? How can rapidly developing technologies of internet and media
communications contribute to the bridging of the self and global divide,
and their knowledges, in contemporary society? What challenges do these
new technologies pose for student lives and education in terms of new
forms of habituations, automations, and mental and physical illnesses?
What new methods, techniques, and styles of teaching can we create to
accommodate a globally more responsible engagement with self-knowledge
and change in undergraduate and graduate educational and curricular
landscapes?