The University of Washington’s Department of History, like the majority of History departments across the country, trains its graduate students as specialists in specific geographically-defined fields. For instance, we were admitted to the program not so much as “History” students but as an historian of Britain and the British Empire (Adrian) and as an historian of Southeast Asia and Latin America (Jorge).

A few years ago, dance scholar Dr. Ratna Roy (Ratna mashi, as I called her in dance practice) told me that she was co-teaching a class with a brain scientist at Evergreen College, and I swallowed my gulp of water a little too fast. Imagining a course in which students simultaneously learn the anatomy of the brain and classical Indian dance movement evoked an exciting picture in my mind of progressive pedagogy.