Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities

Abstract Imam Sadiq University was established as a non-governmental academic institution in Iran in 1982 aiming at combining certain branches of Humanities with Islamic studies. In this article the author tries to evaluate the success and failure of declared aims of the ISU founders to make Islamic Studies not only relevant to the needs of contemporary societies but rather an integrated part of academic discipline. This paper is an attempt to introduce this innovation in combining Islamic studies with other academic subjects, namely, Political Sciences, Management, Economics, Law and Communications at ISU and tries to explore the challenges facing this endeavor.

Abstract  Many political scientists believe that political studies are not merely possible on the basis of a single discipline, Therefore, intra-disciplinary (using a collection of specialties in political sciences like comparative politics, political theory, international relations and so on) as well as interdisciplinary studies (not only political scences, but other fields such as economics, law, international relations…) are also needed. For this reason, universities of different countries like Canada have tried to prepare their students to understand complexities of the globalization age and get suitable jobs by promoting interdisciplinary approach. This paper aims to understand definition of interdisciplinary approach in Canada universities and the methods of its implantation by emphasis on political sciences. The main question is how interdisciplinary approach has been implemented in the Canadian universities by emphasis on political sciences.