Hey, it was that or Comparative Religion. You look at the job market!
Honestly, from this thread and the one I opened, it seems disciplines don’t die so much as get subsumed, or change into something entirely different. For example, a degree in physics from 1800 would represent knowledge from partway through an undergraduate program in one of today’s physics degrees; I doubt it’s still possible to get a degree in Newtonian physics, but only because it has been subsumed and is now a supporting topic on the way to a real physics capstone topic. Similarly, the kinds of geometry an advanced learner studies now are vastly different from the geometry studied when Lobachevsky was in short pants; same name, but fundamentally different fields.
What about Freudian field of psychiatry? I assume a lot of what he taught is considered passe? Or perhaps, like phrenology, it is still acepted in some circles.
First, Freudian psychology is nowhere near as outdated and plain unscientific as phrenology.
Second, it’s not a discipline; it’s a particular set of theories and approaches and methods within a discipline, and even psychology departments that consider themselves completely post-Freudian still read Freud and incorporate his ideas into the curriculum, even if only as a point of comparison, to show how ideas have changed over time.
The Geography department at the university where I work has a GIS track within their degree program. I really don’t know anything more about it other than that it exists, but there are apparently undergraduates today who are majoring in Geography with an emphasis on GIS.
