Transdisciplinarity

The field of early modern women’s writing is by its very nature interdisciplinary, merging as it does the fields of literature, history, gender studies, and manuscript studies, amongst various others. Within this still relatively new field, scholars can approach women’s writing from a single disciplinary perspective or a more interdisciplinary one. Each of these approaches has its own merits and one does not devalue the other; indeed, the different approaches can sit comfortably next to one another, together enriching the field in general. It is, however, necessary to separate the different forms in which non-disciplinary work can take place. This shows that early modern women’s writing—the field in general as well as individual research projects within it—tends not to be transdisciplinary, a method currently hailed as a particularly desirable way of doing collaborative research. Applying a new definition to the term can make it extend to more humanities-based fields, including early modern women’s writing, allowing those fields to gain more funding and place them on a more equal standing among their fellow academic fields as well as in the “real world.”