The particular kind of interdisciplinary activity that the Dictionary promoted was an important benefit of the project.

The attempt to revive Sensibility debates centered on key terms impelled us to include works traditionally claimed by other disciplines than that of English Literature. If we had not felt authorized by the texts themselves to cross these disciplinary boundaries, our acts of retrieval would no doubt have seemed to us transgressive and open to criticism. However, we suggest that the particular kind of interdisciplinary activity that we did engage in was an important benefit of the project.

When students cross disciplinary boundaries in an attempt to revive a historically specific cultural context, their observations are less likely to exhibit the weaknesses of oversimplification or dilletantism. Too often, interdisciplinary work becomes an occasion for students to "answer" a question in their own discipline by importing an artificially polished concept or theory from another discipline. A project like the Dictionary, on the other hand, encourages students to cross boundaries to round out discussions or include other voices and authorities, with the understanding that these new voices are less likely to "settle" disputes than to widen the bases of these disputes.

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