Inter)disciplinary transgressions

In this chapter, the authors present a conversation that both acknowledges the need for interdisciplinarity in women's, gender, and sexuality studies while recognizing that interdisciplinarity itself is neither widely understood nor thoroughly and accurately practiced. They define the key terms at the heart of the argument—specifically instrumental and critical interdisciplinarity—and then making a case for the feminist potential of critical interdisciplinarity. The authors then examine an instrumental model for interdisciplinary research designed to introduce interdisciplinarity to undergraduates. In contrast to instrumental interdisciplinarity, critical interdisciplinarity centers the interrogation and transgression of disciplinarity. The authors offer four different majors: integrative studies; liberal studies; and two degrees, one in health communication and another in communication studies. They provide various correctives that could make the instrumental model an example of feminist critical interdisciplinarity. The authors also offer a case study of departmental governance as an example that illustrates the feminist potential of critical interdisciplinarity to (re)organize scholarship, pedagogy, and administrative structure.