Thematic Interdisciplinary Programs

All too often such programs teach students about the theme but provide no education about interdisciplinarity itself. In the worst case, students are required to take courses in multiple disciplines but given no advice, much less training, on how to integrate insights from these different courses. We believe that students in such programs would benefit from exposure to a discussion of the nature of interdisciplinarity, the interdisciplinary research process, and placement of their theme within the broader history of interdisciplinarity. See Interdisciplinary Studies Programs

Ken Fuchsman, in an article Interdisciplines and Interdisciplinarity: Political Psychology and Psychohistory Compared, in the 2012 volume of Issues in Integrative Studies, notes that "interdisciplines" can behave more like disciplines than interdisciplinary fields: they solidify around a set of theories and methods and subject matter borrowed from parental disciplines. Thematic teaching programs face the temptation also to stress certain theories and methods rather than emphasizing the value of integrating across all relevant theories and methods.

Julie Thompson Klein, Crossing Boundaries: Knowledge, Disciplinarities, and Interdisciplinarities. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press (1996) establishes contexts of interdisciplinarity and then presents case studies of six fields (urban, environmental, border, area, women’s, and cultural studies), plus chapters on literary studies and on science and technology.

Julie Thompson Klein provides an annotated bibliography of (among other things) treatments of interdisciplinarity in respectively the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities.