The role of buddhist studies in fostering metadisciplinary conversations and improving pedagogical collaborations

Abstract

Buddhist studies has been at the center of a number of pedagogical experiments that have emerged on my campus over the last five years in response to Penn State University’s general education reform introducing an integrative studies requirement. The first half of this paper introduces two of these interdisciplinary collaborations. I discuss the structure and goals of these two courses and detail how I integrated Buddhist Studies into the design of each. In the second half of the paper, I describe how the practice of what I call “metadisciplinarity” can help to avoid some of the pitfalls commonly faced in interdisciplinary collaborations. I discuss both how to engage in metadisciplinary reflection and communication and the strengths that Buddhist studies scholars can bring to this kind of pedagogical collaboration based on some core features of our field.