The Paradox of Inter/Disciplinarity: A Rethinking of the Politics of Inter/Disciplinarity and ‘Women’s and Gender Studies’ for the Current Moment femmes et du genre doivent être acceptées et recon- Karen McCallum is a second-generation Canadian nues comme une discipline. Cet argument est basé sur scholar working in critical settler studies, and gender deux assertions : que les disciplines font l’objet d’une and social movement studies. She is a PhD candidate in distinction arbitraire et que la présentation des études Human Rights at the School of Advanced Study, Uni- des femmes et du genre dans la mystique de l’interdis- versity of London (UK), where she works in the politics ciplinarité ne fait que marginaliser l’étude des enjeux of cross-cultural activist work between Indigenous and pertinents au genre, aux femmes et au féminisme, com- non-Indigenous organizers. parativement à d’autres disciplines. Nous soutenons que les études des femmes et du genre sont disciplinaires, Felicia Rahaman holds an MA in Gender Studies and mais nous mettons aussi en évidence l’importance des Feminist Research from McMaster University, and a BA partenariats et des recherches multidisciplinaires et in- from the University of Waterloo in Arts and Business. terdisciplinaires. Her research examines the application of a gendered lens to government financial budgets and the inclusion of women in such decision making bodies. Haley Turnbull is a feminist blogger living in Toron- to. She has an MA in Gender Studies and Feminist Re- search from McMaster University. Her research has fo- cused primarily on the lack of feminist, anti-oppressive quantitative teaching and content in Canadian Gen- der Studies programs. She sits on the executive of the Women’s and Gender Studies et Recherches Féministes (WGSRF) and runs The Scarlet Woman, a feminist blog. Abstract In this paper, we argue that Women’s and Gender Stud- ies (WGS) should be embraced and acknowledged as a discipline. This is premised on two contentions: that disciplines are arbitrarily differentiated and that couch- ing WGS in the mystique of interdisciplinarity serves to marginalize the study of issues pertinent to gender, women, and feminisms in comparison to other topics. We maintain that WGS is disciplinary, but we also high- light the importance of multi- and interdisciplinary partnerships and research. Résumé Dans cet article, nous faisons valoir que les études des Atlantis 37.1, 2015 187 www.msvu.ca/atlantis Introduction the efficacy, and even the possibility, of interdisciplin- Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) should be arity as an idea, an ideal, and a practice (Boxer 1998). embraced and acknowledged as a discipline. This argu- In the latter case, this gave rise to new understand- ment is premised on two contentions. The first is that ings of the intent and normative directions of Wom- disciplines are arbitrarily differentiated and that the di- en’s and Gender Studies as an area of inquiry. As early chotomy between disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity as the mid-2000s, Sabine Hark (2005) indicated that is a false one. The latter term in particular is common- most WGS scholars regarded interdisciplinarity as a ly used but rarely defined. For the purposes of this pa- fundamental characteristic of the field (see also May- per, we adhere to the definition of ‘interdisciplinarity’ nard and Purvis 1998; Bostic 1998; DeVault 1999). A first set out by William H. Newell and William J. Green quarter of a century earlier, in the early 1980s, Sandra (1982): an “inquiry ‘which critically draw[s] upon two Coyner (1983) encouraged scholars to embrace and or more disciplines and which lead[s] to an integration claim WGS as a discipline, and to refer to it as a disci- of disciplinary insights’”(24).1 The second contention is pline among other disciplines. While we, like Coyner that couching WGS in the mystique of interdisciplinar- (1983) and Ann Braithwaite (2012), recognize and are ity serves to marginalize the study of issues pertinent to critical of the false boundaries produced when disci- gender, women, and feminisms in comparison to other plines are delineated, WGS is a discipline both in aim topics. As such, we maintain that WGS is disciplinary, and in practice and is one that embraces and benefits but highlight the importance of cross-, multi-, and in- from exposure to and collaboration with a multiplici- terdisciplinary partnerships and research. ty of disciplinary objectives, methodologies, theories, To illustrate these points, we explore the defi- and epistemologies. nition and practice of interdisciplinarity in WGS pro- In 1998, Judith A. Allen and Sally L. Kitch, in grams as well as elsewhere in the humanities and the their article, “Disciplined by Disciplines?,” argued sciences. In our estimation, such discussions about, and that WGS constituted a new interdiscipline. They debates over, inter/disciplinarity are of particular rele- maintained that, through the process of transcending vance when considering the efficacy, purpose, and value boundaries and borrowing from other disciplines, WGS of a WGS doctoral degree. We thus offer a hypotheti- had created a new and different arrangement of knowl- cal Joint WGS PhD program which takes into account edges, epistemologies, and methodologies (Allen and some of the intellectual tensions we outline in the first Kitch 1998, 278). Braithwaite (2012) has further sug- section of the paper. In advocating for a doctoral degree gested that all disciplines are inherently interdisciplin- that is delivered as a Joint PhD program, we consider ary, in that no traditional discipline has ever operated in questions related to disciplinary boundaries, the im- isolation, but has been built through cross-disciplinary portance of disciplinary subjectivity, and the need for interactions (see also Boxer 1998). While university and cross-disciplinary knowledge production and career other funding models encourage disciplinary “bodies” training (Boxer 1998). to strictly define their own boundaries, such boundaries can be considered quite arbitrary. Interdisciplinarity vs. Disciplinarity Braithwaite (2012) has further pointed out that disciplinarity is usually taken to refer to the coherence of Interdisciplinarity is…one of the founding and key de- “a set of otherwise disparate elements: objects of study, fining elements of feminist knowledge projects—it can methods of analysis, scholars, students, journals, and probably be found in virtually every mission statement grants…disciplinarity is the means by which ensem- or program description of any Women’s Studies program bles of diverse parts are brought into particular types anywhere in the world. (Hark 2005, 10) of knowledge relations with each other” (211). Discipli- narity is less a reflection of “any naturally occurring or Since the first National Women’s Studies As- necessary divisions between types of knowledge,” (211) sociation conference in 1979, Women’s Studies and than it is “a creation of historical moments and institu- feminist scholars have debated the interdisciplinary tional and locational necessity” (212). As Coyner (1983) or disciplinary nature of the field and have examined noted, disciplines often seem “more uniform, more Atlantis 37.1, 2015 188 www.msvu.ca/atlantis structured, more methodical, more ‘disciplined’ than tiquing the phenomenological roots of the process of areas closer at hand” (47). One of the most powerful discipline formation. myths about disciplines is that they are “unified bodies of knowledges, methods, approaches, and practitioners Interdisciplinarity Elsewhere that make them different from each other” (Braithwaite Interdisciplinarity is not a new concept. As Ir- 2012, 212). We suggest that this myth of the unified dis- win Feller has pointed out, “it is the way that many dis- cipline, as opposed to the unbounded interdiscipline, is ciplines, particularly the life sciences, naturally evolve” ultimately damaging to traditionally interdisciplinary (Feller quoted in Pray 2002, par. 3) and hence, inter- subjects like WGS. disciplinarity has considerable currency in the natural The notion of uni-disciplinary competence, as sciences. In conducting a cursory review of Canadian Julie Thompson Klein (1993) has asserted, ignores the universities, we found that the University of Toronto of- reality that “the degree of specialization and the vol- fers some of the most robust interdisciplinary programs ume of information that fall within the boundaries of in the country. Despite this, the University of Toronto’s a named academic discipline are larger than any sin- WGS program is somewhat uniquely considered its gle individual can master” (188). It renders invisible own discipline. By focusing on the University of To- the “differences between sub-disciplines in any field; ronto as a case study and by referring to a number of connections between sub-specialties across different other North American programs, we explore concepts fields, and the frequency of cross disciplinary influ- of inter/disciplinarity and its tensions and challenges in ences in the modern university” (Braithwaite 2012, relation to WGS. 212). Most importantly, the positing of disciplines as At the University of Toronto, the disciplinary ‘unified’, as contrasted to interdisciplinarity, ignores field of History covers an “inexhaustible range of top- the fluidity—the “constant negotiation and struggle ics” (Department of History 2013, par. 1), including [in] redrawing boundaries and redistributing areas the subfields of “aboriginal