The (Inter)Disciplinarity of Media Studies

Abstract

In a series of Teaching Exchange (TE) staff development workshops aimed at exploring prospective, bottom–up quality assurance in media studies in the United Kingdom, interdisciplinarity arose as a key topic. This article reflects on teaching staff’s views expressed in the TE workshops around interdisciplinarity in relation to their experiences in designing and reaching courses, as well as in the classroom. To contextualize these arguments, the article introduces media studies’ interdisciplinarity in reference to other fields, then summarizes the methods used to gain insight into the views of higher education practitioners in media studies in the United Kingdom. It then critically discusses the accounts given by workshop participants of three aspects of the role that interdisciplinarity plays in their pedagogy: at the levels of colleagues’ profiles, course design, and student bodies. The article concludes by noting that tensions exist between top–down pressures “disciplinizing” media studies and its interdisciplinarity characteristics and argues that the field is best conceptualized as an (inter)discipline that, as such, faces distinctive pedagogical challenges and opportunities. The U.K. case study is posited as a possible counterpoint for other higher education contexts internationally.