Radical Interdisciplinarity: A New Iteration of a Woman of Color Methodology

This essay delineates the concept of radical interdisciplinarity, the use of methodologies that combine traditional scholarship with that which is not traditionally considered either scholarship or even part of an academic discipline—specifically poetry and other creative arts. The author describes radical interdisciplinarity as building on the hybrid methodologies of women of color authors such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Audre Lorde, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Michelle Cliff, who often combined memoir with fiction or poetry. The essay itself includes examples of radical interdisciplinarity in the form of a critical biomythography that weaves together scholarly analysis and poetry related to the author's current research on the jamette women of nineteenth-century Trinidad.