In A Field All His Own: The Life and Career of James C. Scott

Overview

A documentary film about the life and career of the academic scholar James C. Scott, drawn from interviews conducted as part of the oral history project James C. Scott: Agrarian Studies and Over 50 Years of Pioneering Work in the Social Sciences. Scott is the Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University and co-founder of the Yale Agrarian Studies Program. In his interviews, Scott discusses his childhood in New Jersey and the Quaker school that played a large role in shaping the scholar known for marching to his own drummer. He discusses his experience with the National Student Association, the interesting turn his studies took upon entry to Yale Graduate School, and the string of books he produced in the decades that followed. He also recounts the founding of the Agrarian Studies Program, an interdisciplinary flagship in the humanities and social sciences now celebrating over thirty years of operation at Yale University.