ABSTRACT
In October 1984 the University of York registered its first students for the MA degree in Women’s Studies. The introduction of the degree course marked the fruit of several years of planning and preparation. Prior to this, courses such as women’s history, women and politics, and feminist philosophy had been taught at undergraduate level in individual departments. There had, however, been very little interdisciplinary teaching of women’s studies, and none at graduate level. All teaching is fraught with difficulties, but interdisciplinary teaching more so than most, and the study of an age as stereotyped as the Victorian period is a minefield of potential problems: not only was there an uncertain, and sometimes slender, background of shared knowledge for those coming from different disciplines, but there was also a divergence of approach to topics which span disciplines. The language of sexuality and of subordination was one language to the historian, another to the philosopher, yet another to the literary critic.
