Reply to comment

It's hard for me to take a strong stance on interdisciplinary instruction, because I haven't taken part in a cross-listed class, so far, in school.  BUT: it has happened, accidentally, on a couple of occasions.

This class, for example, partners beautifully with my Virginia Woolf course, and, though they are not taught as one course, I have gained insights into both courses just by being a part of both.  I initially had hesitations with a 300 level English class because of the narrowness of the group thought that inevitably comes with 300-level courses.  But Anne's class has opened up what  might have otherwise been a somewhat myopic approach to Virginia Woolf in a way that I really appreciate, and that, I think, is thanks to the interdisciplinary style of the courses, however accidental.

 This sort of deviates from Paulos's theory of "complicators" and "simplifiers" because these two courses fall into the humanities category and intertwine easily.  I think when we saw Paul Grobstein's theory of biology as a story, we were faced with this sort of dichotomy, and allowed to ask ourselves if the brief interdisciplinary exercise worked, or was too much of  a stretch.