Crossing of Boundaries: Interdisciplinarity as an Opportunity for Universities in the 1990s?

Abstract

This essay discusses interdisciplinarity as a theoretical, historical, and political scholarly issue. Vosskamp emphasizes, first and foremost, that interdisciplinarity is both dependent upon and indebted to disciplinarity and, further, that successful dialogue and cooperation among the disciplines require both independence within and competence of individual disciplines. He offers a scholarly history of interdisciplinarity before embarking upon an explanation and illustration of interdisciplinary communicative competence; these discussions lead him to draw specific institutional conclusions pertinent to research and teaching in universities in the 1990s.