Bridging the Silos: Memory as Conceptual Binder in Teaching and Research across a Large Public University

Abstract

This convergent mixed-methods study examines a case for a bottom-up approach to identifying key areas for inter- and trans-disciplinary research at a large R1 university. The study of memory, broadly defined, was the key concept explored across faculty research and teaching. Survey data were collected from 347 faculty respondents. Quantitative analyses examined whether disciplinary background and career stage predicted self-reported engagement with memory, while qualitative coding of open-ended responses identified disciplinary and collective forms of memory use. Regression results indicated that faculty in the humanities and arts reported significantly higher engagement with memory in both teaching and research. However, qualitative findings showed that faculty across disciplinary areas described practices involving temporality, disciplinary history, change over time, and socially situated understandings of the past, even when they did not explicitly name these practices as memory work. Findings suggest that memory may function as a latent conceptual bridge across disciplinary teaching and research, while also revealing how disciplinary vocabularies shape whether faculty recognize and articulate shared concepts.