The Case for Interdisciplinary Knowledge and Practice: A Review of Interdisciplinarity and Rethinking the Curriculum

Recent books by advocates of interdisciplinarity represent two strategies to advance its standing in academia. Julie Thompson Klein emphasizes interdisciplinarity as a credible means of acquiring true knowledge. A collection of essays edited by Mary E. Clark and Sandra A. Wawrytko expresses interdisciplinarity as a practical means of addressing contemporary social and global problems. These distinct approaches may reproduce a historical conflict within liberal education such that interdisciplinarity represents a change in the form, not the substance, of higher learning.