Our Mission and Vision
Our Mission
The Department of Interdisciplinary Studies provides a progressive, open model for an academic department that promotes creative and imaginative investigations of complex systems and problems. We support innovative scholarship and teaching that is responsive to changes in fields of study inside and outside of academia. We foster courses and programs of study that are engaged with the needs of global and local communities as well as social justice issues. We support new modes of teaching, learning, and research that cut across disciplinary boundaries and explore interstitial areas of concern.
Our Vision
We recognize that disciplinary boundaries are not static. The department strives to become a home for emerging and established interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary programs. We seek to take a leading role within the university as a home for innovation and experimentation in teaching and scholarship. We seek to be a leader within the UNC and across the nation in fostering and supporting multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary programs that address critical issues in a complex world.
Faculty Spotlight
Dr. Mark Nunes
Mark Nunes earned his interdisciplinary Ph.D. at Emory University's Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts, one of the first interdisciplinary doctoral programs in the country. He has taught at Appalachian State University since 2014. While he primarily teaches and advises students in our Individually Designed major program, he has also taught in our Global Studies program and in Watauga Residential College. He also served as chair for the Department of Interdisciplinary studies from 2014 through 2022.
Professor Nunes teaches courses in new media and digital culture that explore how the internet, social media platforms, algorithms, and other aspects of digital technology impact our politics, our culture, and our everyday lives He is the author of Cyberspaces of Everyday Life (Minnesota 2006), editor of and contributor to Error: Glitch, Jam, and Noise in New Media Cultures (Bloomsbury 2014), and co-editor of and co-contributor to "You're Muted": Performance, Precarity, and the Logic of Zoom (Bloomsbury 2024). He has also written over two dozen chapters and articles on the role and place of networks, platforms, and digital devices in everyday life.
Professor Nunes also co-produces Positions: The Podcast of the Cultural Studies Association, which is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.