Collaborative Teaching across the Disciplines: Psychology Meets Feminist Theory and Literary Studies

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay, co-written by a visiting Psychology professor and a tenured English professor at a small liberal arts college, examines our experience teaching a collaborative class-unit of separate classes in Feminist Theory and Psychology of Gender. Despite personal commitments to interdisciplinary and cross-cultural scholarship, faculty obligations to a home discipline and even student commitment to disciplinary methodologies create particular difficulties for feminist teaching. This essay details a practical experiment within institutional parameters to create a truly cross-disciplinary experience for students. Student responses to the unit, obstacles to interdisciplinary work, instructorsââ¬â¢ reflections, and future directions for collaborative cross-disciplinary work are detailed.