(Feminist) Political Science as an Interdisciplinary Exploration

As a political theorist who has been profoundly shaped by the feminist movement and feminist theorizing that arose from it, my work is interdisciplinary at its core. It is difficult, if not impossible, to engage in the work of political theorizing without taking into account the multiple dimensions of human experience, and multiple methodologies by which to explore them. Those of us who teach in liberal arts colleges are particularly fortunate/privileged in this regard: to the extent that we see our mission as preparing our students to be critically engaged citizens (rather than preparing them to be political scientists), we are free to draw on multiple apfiroaches. Furthermore, because most of us have to teach across sub fields, we are enabled, encouraged, perhaps even forced, to integrate multiple perspectives into our teaching. That, in turn, may well affect our research and writing. I argue that these sorts of "boundary crossings" are valuable both for our students and for us.