Toward a Collaborative Model for Interdisciplinary Teaching: Business and Literature

As team teachers of a self-designed interdisciplinary course, we often use literature to illustrate business principles. Because one of us teaches English and the other teaches business management, it was a challenge to overcome the biases of our own disciplines. Discussed here is what we have learned from planning the course, from developing curriculum and pedagogy, and, most important, from our experience in the classroom. The objectives are to provide guidance for interdisciplinary teaching, to present a model for bridging business and literature, and to outline features of a collaborative interdisciplinary model that can be extended to other disciplines. This model is the outgrowth of a course we have designed to bridge business management and literature. Offered as a sophomore-level special topics course, it is cross listed in the Departments of English and Business Management Technology.