Welcome to the fall 2016 semester from AHTR!
Its that time again! Fall semester and all of the delights and headaches that entails.
What we’ve been up to at AHTR.
AHTR has had a busy summer. We recently began a strategic planning process focused on the future direction and sustainability of AHTR and the related peer-reviewed e-journal, Art History Pedagogy and Practice. We reached out to long-time supporters and met wonderful new contacts, and we are so grateful for the input and advice they’ve given us over these last few months. AHTR is truly a community effort, and we hope to see the fruits of our summer discussions manifest in future grant applications, metadata reorganization and development, and new content areas, especially focused in the coming twelve to eighteen months.
In May, Contributing Editor Nara Hohensee represented AHTR/AHPP at the HASTAC conference in Tempe, Arizona, and AHPP Journal Manager and Contributing Editor Ginger Spivey attended the Lilly Conference in Bethesda, Maryland, in June. In August, Contributing Editor Parme Giuntini and AHTR Dean Karen Shelby went to LA to present on AHTR and the AHPP journal at the Arts in Society conference, where they were able to meet a wide variety of educators and receive helpful feedback on the site. We were delighted to find that others in the humanities are embracing an interactive pedagogical practice; this included some intrepid Ph.D. candidates in Oregon who were using RTTP in their introductory music history courses.
What we’ve got planned.
In the Fall, Contributing Editor and Journal Manager Ginger Spivey will present at the 2016 ISSOTL Conference in Los Angeles on AHTR and the AHPP initiative as a model of SoTL advocacy in the humanities. AHTR Dean Michelle Millar Fisher and Nara have been selected to participate in Art History in Digital Dimensions, a three-day symposium convened by the Department of Art History and Archaeology and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) of the University of Maryland, College Park, and supported by the Getty Foundation and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. The symposium aims to unite diverse audiences and practitioners in a critical intervention for the digital humanities and digital art history, providing a cogent and inclusive road map for the future. Renee McGarry, AHPP Journal Manager and Contributing Editor, is presenting a paper titled “Digital Tools and Physical Objects: Connecting Museums, Teaching, and Scholarship through Art History Teaching Resources” at Bucknell University’s Digital Scholarship Conference in October; and Parme and Karen hope to participate in a breakfast roundtable on pedagogy at SECAC that month also.
The first AHPP journal issue is about to go live!
We are also busy with the first edition of Art History Pedagogy and Practice that will be published later this fall. The journal’s initial CfP generated a truly great response, and we had an embarrassment of riches to review for inclusion–underlining, we think, the appetite for this academic research to have a journal as a home and platform. We want to thank everyone who submitted manuscripts, and those of you who graciously volunteered time to help with peer review. We were also so very pleased with the number of responses to the Call for Participation for the AHTR Weekly. We look forward to publishing contributions from many new authors over the next academic year, including two strong posts on MoMA’s MOOCs and their use in the classroom.
AHTR is already preparing for CAA 2017 …
AHTR will be convening a panel at CAA title State of the Art (History): Pedagogy Laboratory (thank you to everyone who submitted–it is very difficult to make choices as we read and re-read every amazing proposal this weekend). Save the date! Friday, 02/17/17: 5:30–7:00 PM. (Room: Rendezvous Trianon, 3rd Floor, New York Hilton Midtown.) We look forward to seeing you there.
AHTR is also pleased to be collaborating with Karen Leader and Amy Hamlin of Art History That and Material Collective to present “Art History Plays with Food.” This will be a special lunchtime poster session at CAA designed for undergraduates to attend the conference for free and present research projects addressing art and food. See this CFP (deadline Dec. 1, 2016) if you’d like to participate and here are some ideas and bibliography AHTR prepared on food-related related assignments to help you get started. For anyone in the NYC area wishing to get your students involved in the organization of this session, please email karen.shelby@gmail.com. “Art History Plays with Food” will take place from noon to 1:30pm on February 18, 2017 as part of Interventions in Art History, a day-long series of panels Leader and Hamlin are curating to address the future of art history.
Still prepping for fall? Check this out!
As you prepare your courses for the fall, please keep in mind the many resources available at ATHR. When developing content for survey classes, we recommend you explore the thematic lesson plans that offer different ways to engage students in art history, often involving current events. For example, Sarah Dillon and Karen Koehler address very timely issues in their Art History as Civic Engagement and Art and Political Commitment lesson plans, respectively. For more general teaching ideas, our team has been combing the AHTR archives for our favorite posts and assignments from the past, and these are now featured under the #AHTRfaves hashtag on Twitter. Find the @a_h_t_r page here!