Ordinary Wars: Doing Transdisciplinary Research

Transdisciplinary projects are messy, complicated, and exhilarating. They stretch the collaborators, sometimes uncomfortably, beyond the predictable, expected, and routine ways of engaging with research. Making public the private tensions of "ordinary" cultural expectations associated with singlehood, marriage, and motherhood, the authors used a kinesthetic analysis of social-science qualitative data to create an evening-length professional dance concert. Ordinary Wars: Doing Transdisciplinary Research is an exploration of the project, from its inception through its current state. It focuses on providing readers with an understanding of the ways in which working collaboratively on a transdisciplinary project is both incredibly challenging and unpredictably rewarding. Our project has been fraught with fears of distortion and dishonesty, punctuated with questions of truth, fiction, acts of commission, and acts of omission. It has also been accompanied by groundbreaking ideas, feelings of triumph, and exponential growth.
In this book, we invite readers "backstage," exposing our discomfort, missteps, confusion, successes, and lessons learned. We explore how ordinary practices (i.e., disciplinary paradigms, social expectations of femininity) constitute complex, yet barely visible battlegrounds on which wars are often fought in silence. We offer readers a vision of the larger project as a means of affecting change in the academy, our respective fields, and in our communities through making visible what we have come to understand are extraordinary Ordinary Wars.

Genevieve Durham DeCesaro is Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and an Associate Professor of Dance at Texas Tech University. Her choreography has been commissioned and performed across the country, with notable presentations at Virginia Tech, Spelman College, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. She serves on the National Board of the American College Dance Association, holding an elected Directorship of the South-Central Region. She maintains an active performance career and focuses her research in the areas of feminism in dance, transformative curricula, and equity in dance education.

Elizabeth A. Sharp is an Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Studies and an affiliate faculty member of Women's Studies at Texas Tech University and recently held an Honorary Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University, England. Her work examines the intersection of gender and familial ideologies. Using feminist frameworks, her research focuses on single women, recently married women, and weddings. She has published broadly in the fields of Human Development and Family Studies, Sociology, Psychology, and Family Therapy.