Re-Teaching Rapa Nui

October 30, 2021

by Ellen C. Caldwell see the complete lesson plan here In January of 2020, just before the world would be unalterably impacted by COVID-19, I had the great fortune of traveling to Rapa Nui. Having taught art history surveys with an emphasis on Polynesian and Oceanic art for over a decade, I had dreamt of […]

Revealing Museums — Together

February 19, 2021

How do public art museums function today? Who selects the objects on display and defines the stories that are (de)constructed? What are the value systems underpinning how museum collections and exhibitions operate? Join a three-part series of live online conversations with artists, students, and staff of the MFA Boston, exploring some of the critical questions, structures and processes that guide our museum work today.

CAA 2021

February 5, 2021

By Aly Meloche and Francesca Albrezzi February 10th marks the beginning of a CAA annual meeting that promises to be unlike any other. Normally, many of us look forward to the annual meeting as an opportunity to catch up with colleagues from around the world and hear new ideas for research and teaching. It’s strange […]

Baptism by Fire: Tips and Tactics from My First Time Teaching Remotely

November 20, 2020

While I’ve had many years of experience working with digital tools and creating digital art history projects, the transition to distance learning provided me with an opportunity to get creative and try some things that were new. Here are a few tips and tricks that I used, which others may find useful as we continue to teach and learn in an online environment.

Can COVID-19 Reinvigorate our Teaching? Employing Digital Tools for Spatial Learning

November 14, 2020

Spatial learning provides exciting possibilities, unhindered by remote learning (and perhaps unbound by it?), combining the brain’s natural aptitude for spatial thinking with the contextualization possible through virtual environments.

Conducting SoTL of an online art history course: using discourse analysis of discussion boards

November 1, 2020

For those of us who are just beginning to teach online, the concept of conducting scholarship of teaching and learning in addition to all of the other new responsibilities must sound about as much fun as running a virtual meeting while trying to homeschool new math.

Rethinking the Curriculum by Rethinking the Art History Survey

October 14, 2020

s a Renaissance art historian I am keenly aware of the passion that can be generated through “classic” works of art from the traditional Western survey, but it is long past the time that we stop prioritizing such a model. Doing so would not only be good for art history, but it might also offer the chance to lead by example for greater inclusivity and equity in higher education more broadly.

Decolonial Introduction to the Theory, History and Criticism of the Arts

September 14, 2020

Written by Carolin Overhoff Ferreira, Associate Professor at the Department of History of ArtFederal at the University of São Paulo, this book “draws on texts from recent picture and image theory, as well as on present-day Amerindian authors, anthropologists and philosophers [to] question the power structure inherent in Eurocentric art discourses and to decolonize art studies, using Brazil’s arts, its theory and history as a case study to do so.”

Student Voices: The Online Switch

August 14, 2020

Author: Xavier Lopez is a queer art history student who has attended San Francisco State University and Mt. San Antonio College. He is transferring to UC Berkeley this coming fall to pursue a B.A. in Art History. With a focus on Pre-Columbian Art, Lopez hopes to further educate himself on these Indigenous cultures along with […]

Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Formal Analysis:Updating a Classroom Staple for the Age of Remote Learning

August 10, 2020

With some creativity and advanced planning, remote modalities can actually offer important silver linings to the art historical instructor. In particular, a well-designed, intentional rethinking of the classic formal analysis exercise has the potential to facilitate the inclusivity that we as instructors strive to foster.

What do you see that makes you say that?: Gallery Teaching in the (Online) Art History Classroom

July 31, 2020

This is a reflection on the Hammer Museum Student Educator’s recent shift to digital conversations about art. In the past few months, the educators have transitioned to facilitating conversations about works of art with adult and K-12 groups on Zoom. While the bodily relationship to works of art is lost in the digital sphere, aspects of the educator’s facilitation have become richer and more nuanced.

Teaching Online Now

July 22, 2020

AHTR was founded as a space of community to share successes, failures, and reflections on teaching art history between peers. It was also founded so folks would not have to reinvent the wheel each time they taught; instead, they could expand the knowledge and experiences of colleagues. With this in mind, we have decided to devote the AHTR Weekly to teaching art history online throughout the coming academic year.

Art in Quarantine Assignment

July 17, 2020

Like many of us, the sudden pivot to online and distance learning has inspired me to be more creative with assessments in the first year survey courses I am teaching this summer. For one particular assignment I am asking students to do their own Art in Quarantine challenge recreating works of art from our syllabus using themselves and objects from their own homes.

Art + Feminism Remote Learning Guide

July 11, 2020

Art+Feminism has tools for teaching with Wikipedia that can be easily adapted for remote learning and remixed to any subject matter. These tools are made for the virtual space, creating a rich opportunity for students to contribute directly to the act of knowledge sharing and information advocacy while honing research and writing skills.

The Art History Generalist: Challenges, Strategies and the Future of Teaching Art History

May 22, 2020

This week’s post is a summary of a CAA 2020 session panel of the same name. Introduction [Sarah Diebel is an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin – Stout). She served as the Session Chair.]  I’m an art history generalist in the School of Art & Design at the University of Wisconsin-Stout with my […]

Activating the Classroom: Correcting Museum Labels as an In-Class Writing Activity

May 15, 2020

[Author: Izabel Galliera. Isabel is an Assistant Professor of Art History in the Department of Art and Design at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania. In addition to teaching art history, she collaborates in overseeing the interdisciplinary Minor in Museum Studies. Her research interests are at the intersection of art, politics and social justice, contemporary art in a […]

Transforming an Upper Level Art History Course to Writing Intensive

May 9, 2020

[Author: Andrea K. Lee, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Art. Chair, Department of Art and Design at Park University.] I teach art and art history at Park University, a small, liberal arts university in Parkville, Missouri. In addition to our flagship campus in the Midwest, Park University has forty-one campus centers in various states throughout the nation.   […]

Teaching Arnautoff: Public Art and Emotion in the Art History Classroom

April 19, 2020

This article was originally published in the newsletter of Public Art Dialogue, a CAA Affiliated Society that aims to provide platforms for dialogue among public art professionals and students across disciplines. Public Art Dialogue sponsors panels and discussions, publishes the peer-review journal Public Art Dialogue, and presents the PAD Award, given annually to an individual or […]

Teaching Gender with the Archive

April 15, 2020

[Author: Simon Soon is a professor in the Visual Arts Program, Cultural Centre, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. His interests and contributions to art history and related fields are wide! His research focuses primarily on 19th and 20th-century art and visual culture in Southeast Asia; the region he studies is framed along two temporally and […]

Teaching with the Museum: partnership as pedagogy

March 27, 2020

[Author: Laura M. Holzman, Associate Professor of Art History and Museum Studies and Public Scholar of Curatorial Practices and Visual Art at IUPUI.] During a public health crisis in which teachers are revising face-to-face courses for virtual formats and museums are closed to visitors, it feels odd to be writing about teaching art history in […]

The Inclusive Object Toolkit

March 22, 2020

A key goal of my teaching is to engage students in reading critically the processes, systems and institutional actors that produce art and art history and the ways that power has and continues to shape art history’s contours and contents. Many resources already exist to support this work. My goal was to aggregate select materials from this corpus and stage them in formats both pedagogically provocative and accessible for undergraduates. Hence the Inclusive Object Toolkit, a web-based, open access resource built in the LibGuide platform.

Distance Learning: a Brief Tutorial

March 13, 2020

Many, if not most, universities across the United States (and the world) have made the unexpected and abrupt switch to distance learning. While art history classes have been offered online for several years now, for many of us this is a new experience.

Clickbait as Critical Pedagogy: Muslim Vikings and the Scholarly News Cycle

February 23, 2020

[Author: Rachel Miller, PhD, is an assistant professor of art history at California State University, Sacramento. She teaches lower-division surveys of global art and upper-division courses on ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque art. Her research is focused on the global dissemination of visual representations of Catholic saints in the early modern era.] In 2009, Jorge […]

Clickbait as Critical Pedagogy: Teaching Information Literacy and Aztec Sacrifice

February 14, 2020

Author: Mya Dosch, Assistant Professor of Art of the Americas at California State University, Sacramento. Please comment below, through the AHTR facebook group, or email dosch@csus.edu with thoughts, questions, or suggestions– I would love to hear from AHTR Weekly readers on how they teach information literacy, as I think about how to adapt this basic […]

Promoting science through the arts (or vice versa)

January 31, 2020

[Editor’s note:  “Promoting Science through the Arts (or vice versa)” by Aldemaro Romero, Jr, Dean of the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College, CUNY, was originally published in Leonardo’s Children: Stories on Creativity by Fine Arts Leaders that will Blow Your Mind.  The book is the result of collaboration among members of ICFAD […]

Seeing “Me” in Art History: Taking on the Canon at the Community College

January 10, 2020

Author: Olivia Chiang, Associate Professor, Art History, Manchester Community College, Manchester, CT In February of this past year (2019), I had the honor and pleasure of sitting down in a roundtable-style discussion with thirteen colleagues from community colleges, four-year universities, publishing houses, and from the media and technology fields to discuss the topic of “Reflecting […]

On Internships and Equity: What Actions Can We Take? 

December 21, 2019

It’s nearing the season when students of all ages and stages are thinking about applying for summer internships (application cycles start early). We want to amplify a conversation we know is already on many of the minds and lips of many who read AHTR Weekly: how do we responsibly counsel students–often in significant debt for tuition–about unpaid internships?

Using (or Losing) the Art History Textbook: SECAC Conference Panel Review

December 15, 2019

Blog Post intro, Dr. Kathleen Pierce and Dr. Jenevieve DeLosSantos: The impetus for our panel at SECAC 2019 in Chattanooga stemmed in equal parts from praxis and intellectual curiosity. On the one hand, we both found ourselves coming up against parallel questions and quandaries in the classroom, no doubt questions encountered by many Art History Teaching […]

Teaching with Images in the First-Year Writing Classroom

December 7, 2019

Author: Lauren Boasso The learning activity I describe below was my first attempt at employing visual analysis in my First-Year Writing classroom. I often incorporate a variety of images into my upper-level literature courses (and even taught a course titled “Photography in the Contemporary Novel”), but I have never tried this strategy with my composition […]

Having it All: Helping Visualization Students Demystify the Thesis

November 15, 2019

In fall 2016, I became more involved with my liaison department Visualization, which is housed under the College of Architecture. The department of Visualization, also known as the VizLab, is presumably the closet department to a fine arts experience on my campus – Texas A&M University.  In addition to a Masters of Science (MS) generally […]

From the AHTR archives: The (Contemporary) Art History Mixtape: Setting the Tone in the Classroom with Music

October 18, 2019

Editor’s note: This post was originally published on Dec. 7, 2017.  We are nearing the end-of-the-semester. Wake up those sleeping students with music! Please share your own experiences with using music, contemporary or otherwise, in the comments below, on AHTR’s public group on Facebook, or tag us on Twitter @a_h_t_r. The (Contemporary) Art History Mixtape: […]

Organizing a Poster Session for Student Research

October 11, 2019

Editor’s Note: This blog post appeared earlier this week on the website of the Council for Undergraduate Research Arts and Humanities. AHTR wanted to repost it as a useful idea for sharing student research, and as a reminder that submissions to CAA’s Undergraduate Research Poster Session are due on October 31. The poster session is […]

From the AHTR Archives: Physical Engagement and Making in Portfolio Assessments for the Art History Survey

October 4, 2019

This post originally appeared in the AHTR Weekly on April 18, 2018. A number of years ago I was at the Art Institute of Chicago with a group of students from my AP art history class at a Chicago public high school. On entering the gallery dominated by El Greco’s 13-foot-high Assumption of the Virgin […]

September 20, 2019

Good Friday everyone! Unfortunately, our scheduled post for this week had to be pushed back for publication at a later date this fall. Since many of us are approaching mid-semester (already!), I thought it prudent to post some ideas from the archive on final exams. It is not too late to rethink your strategies! In Three […]

Teaching Tips for Art History and Other Image-based Classes

September 14, 2019

Pumped and scared? Sounds about right for the start of any semester. Inspired by a recent twitter thread that Jennifer Dudley, an art history Ph.D. student in the UK, started to solicit tips around teaching, we decided to crowdsource this week’s post by asking the AHTR community what advice they would give someone just starting out in the classroom.

Undergraduate Outreach Initiative Planned for CAA in Chicago

September 6, 2019

In March 2019, the AHTR Weekly launched its Student Voices series with Alejandra Cervantes’s reflection on her experience attending CAA’s Annual Conference in New York. Her essay brings important perspective that is too often missing in conversations about diversity and equity in higher education. Cervantes’s comments remind faculty–especially those of us well past our undergraduate years–of the […]

Fragments of the Full Self: Reflections on Digital Pedagogy Lab

August 30, 2019

As I sit down to write a reflection of Digital Pedagogy Lab 2019 (DPL) I wonder how I can possibly write about sitting in radical community, a community that genuinely centered the voices of students and women of color, that fed my hope and imagination (and sometimes my cynicism), and offered me the chance to […]

Creative Assessments for Creative Art History Teaching

August 23, 2019

Pedagogical evolution and innovation in art history increase student engagement and ‘buy-in.’ Innovations also keep instruction from feeling stale for both the students and instructors. Innovation also can remind us why we keep walking into the classroom.  An AHTR Weekly post by Cara Smulevitz from April 2018 about her move from the traditional “high-stakes exams […]

Don’t stress the new semester!

August 17, 2019

Honestly, this week has been a little overwhelming with so many excellent teaching resources streaming non-stop across my screens. Advice on crafting a syllabus abounds (here’s one of my favorites)!  And I’m thrilled to see all sorts of new materials to help me teach writing (check out this open ebook Writing for Success from Georgia State’s Perimeter College […]

Fall 2019!

August 10, 2019

AHTR has some exciting new posts for this fall! But as we all prepare our fall syllabi, we thought it prudent to re-post a few from the AHTR Weekly – we have several years worth of ideas to peruse!    Teaching for the first time? Read Purposeful Pedagogy. CUNY (the City University of New York) […]

On Collaboration, AHTR, and Work in the Arts: A Conversation Among Friends

June 19, 2019

The following conversation was recorded over Zoom on Sunday June 9, with Michelle in Philadelphia, Karen in Maplewood, New Jersey, and Ginger in Silver Spring, Maryland, and has been edited for publication. As three of the many people behind the joint AHTR project, we sat down recently to talk about the year, to celebrate the […]

Twine

June 14, 2019

Twine is a free, open-source digital tool that connects textual passages to one another through well-demarcated links. It is becoming increasingly popular with educators, particularly in the humanities. There is a plethora of possibilities for this deceptively simple, yet powerful interactive writing device that taps into our built-in affinity for telling stories. Twine is the […]

“I read it, but I don’t get it.”

June 8, 2019

How many times have we heard students utter such comments? Recently, a student who had excelled in my Survey II class came to my office hours. She was visibly shaken and described her struggle in her upper level art history course. She told me she would read the article, understand every single word, take notes […]

Hypothes.is

June 6, 2019

To become active and insightful interpreters of literary or scholarly texts, students must learn to attend to and trust in their own thoughtful responses to what they read.  Instructors can help students to acquire this self-awareness by encouraging them to makes notes – as most experienced readers do habitually – on the texts that they […]

Digital Toolkit, Part 2: Evaluating Podcasts and Videos

May 31, 2019

If you’re interested in teaching with technology, you have likely thought about creating assignments around podcasting or video for your students (and if you haven’t, you can read my post on how to do it). However, one big hurdle for many instructors is the question of how to evaluate these projects, especially if they have […]

Student Voices: Misadventures in Undergraduate Research

May 24, 2019

Editor’s Note: This week’s post is part of AHTR’s series  “Student Voices”  where undergraduates reflect on their learning experiences. We encourage students to use this opportunity to engage in the ongoing conversation about pedagogy and current issues affecting students today.  Please contact us at info@arthistorytr.org if you, or a student you know, is interested in sharing a story.  […]

No really, THIS is the essay you should remember in twenty years!: Didactic Posters for Foundational Texts

May 17, 2019

[Editors note: Mary’s essay is the first in a short series of AHTR Weekly posts that address how to help students read and retain information from assigned texts.] It is often hard to convince my students that one particular reading, artwork, or artist is of such foundational importance that it changed the discipline—and they should […]

Decolonizing and Diversifying Are Two Different Things: A Workshop Case Study

May 10, 2019

We (Amber and Ana) met in 2018 through our involvement with Interference Archive’s Education Working Group. Interference Archive is a volunteer-run space in Brooklyn centering the cultural production that emerges from social movements through an open stacks archival collection, exhibitions, and events. The Education Working Group facilitates the use of Interference Archive’s resources for pedagogical […]

A Transcultural Introduction to Art

May 3, 2019

As art history has grown steadily more global, transcultural, and intercultural, many of us have sought ways to revise introductory courses in order to de-center western art, to represent the discipline of art history as inherently multicultural, and – while we’re at it – to find alternatives to the chronological ordering of material. The course […]

Teaching Art History and Writing II: SECAC Conference Panel Review

April 27, 2019

Many of us have overheard the frustrated professorial refrain, “My students should have learned how to write in their Freshman Composition class!” Perhaps some of us are even guilty of such utterances ourselves. But this myth, which Linda S. Bergmann and Janet Zapernick call the “inoculation approach” to writing instruction, creates a false separation between […]

Take A Closer Look At (and Teach) W.E.B. Du Bois’s Afrofuturist Data Visualizations from 1900

April 19, 2019

WEB DuBois’ boldly colored graphs and charts interrogated everything from literacy to population distribution to employment, and a striking lead image for the Georgia study represented the “color line”–the transatlantic slave trade route–further theorized by Du Bois in his 1903 The Souls of Black Folk. As Battle-Baptiste and Rusert attest, “while a broader American culture was not ready to recognize the existence of a school of black sociologists in the US South, Du Bois turned to a visual medium–and the proto-modernist aesthetics of turn-of-the-century data visualization–to gain the attention of an international audience.”

Fred Wilson in the Classroom

April 12, 2019

[Editor’s note: this week’s post provides a few ideas on how to incorporate the work of a specific artist into the overall program of a class. This method expands upon the traditional ways in which art and artists are shared with students.] [1] Institutional Critique: Following Fred Wilson and Mark Dion           […]

Renaissance “Chopped”: Mixing the history of food in Renaissance Italy and  food competitions

April 5, 2019

Overview Renaissance “Chopped” is an in-class activity that can be adapted for courses at all levels of art history and is appropriate for both majors and non-majors in the discipline. While it works best with 6 or 7 groups, it is also appropriate for smaller seminars. My students came up with the topic that led […]

Student Voices: A Conversation about Collaboration

March 29, 2019

The conversation below sheds light on the collaborative process between a professor and student as they co-authored the paper “On Frida Kahlo, Salma Hayek, and Linda Nochlin: A Case Study of Art, Gender, and Pain in the Wake of #MeToo,” recently featured on AHTR and presented at College Art Association’s (CAA) 2019 Annual Conference. The […]

On Frida Kahlo, Salma Hayek, and Linda Nochlin: A Classroom Case Study of Art, Gender, and Pain in the Wake of #MeToo

March 22, 2019

In the wake of #MeToo, many educators pondered how to incorporate the movement into their curriculum. In the spring of 2018, just four months after Ashley Judd’s sexual allegations against Harvey Weinstein sparked a relaunching of Tarana Burke’s original 2006 phrase “Me Too,” I was scheduled to teach an art history course titled “Women and Gender […]

Digital Toolkit, Part I: Podcasting and Video Production

March 15, 2019

In a previous post, I outlined some of the reasons why more art historians should be presenting our research through podcasts and videos. They’re engaging, they have a wide reach, they help keep us honest about our arguments and materials. These are also the reasons why we should be teaching our students to present their […]

My Time at CAA: An Undergraduate’s Story of the Annual Conference

March 8, 2019

“Que Dios me la bendiga y la proteje,” said my mother as we stood hugging next to the bustling TSA lines of Orlando International Airport. Not caring that lines were filling up fast with travelers, I hugged her tighter and tighter until she let out a soft chuckle warning me not to break her espalda […]

The value of storytelling in the Digital Humanities

March 1, 2019

With the recent establishment of the Digital Art History Society, it seems that art history as a discipline has finally, officially staked out our own corner of the Digital Humanities world. It was a long time coming, and many brilliant people had a hand in it—including those here at AHTR. It’s fantastic to see an […]

Teaching Graphic Design History

February 22, 2019

In October 2018, I chaired a SECAC session on teaching graphic design history. As a professor in both the graphic design studio and the design history classroom, I have a longstanding interest in developing design history coursework that actively engages studio students. When teaching survey courses, I seek learner-oriented assignments that offer opportunities for critical […]

Teaching Art History and Writing I: SECAC 2018 Conference Panel Review

February 16, 2019

For the 2018 SECAC conference in Birmingham, I set out to organize a panel that would bring together faculty who utilize innovative approaches to teaching writing alongside art historical content. Recognizing that many instructors, departments, and curricula expect art history students to develop skills of critical thinking, source analysis, grammar, syntax, and style alongside visual […]

A Guide to Pedagogy-Related Programming at CAA’s 2019 Annual Conference

February 9, 2019

Every year around this time, I find myself in mild state of professional panic. It’s the week before CAA’s Annual Conference and I haven’t yet chosen which sessions to attend. Although this year’s conference website allows users to create a personalized schedule by using keywords and other filters to identify specific sessions, AHTR’s Franny Zawadzki graciously […]

OERs

February 6, 2019

AHTR has created this Repository that not only includes course content, but also offers insight into how these resources can be effectively used in class. The OERs materials added to AHTR provide an overview of Open Educational Resources with a focus on OERs as an opportunity to expand pedagogical choices, develop student information literacy, introduce a wider variety […]

Changing the stereotype of online teaching: Face-to-face in a virtual classroom

February 1, 2019

Although online courses are carving out an increasing swath in college curriculums, there are still many faculty who shudder at the idea of teaching outside of a classroom. It’s not the content or rigor of online learning they object to; it’s the perceived lack of engagement with students. “Nothing replaces being in the classroom with […]

Five Steps to Universal Design and 508 Compliance for Online Courses

January 25, 2019

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, amended in 2008, requires that publicly funded (Title II) and private (Title III) colleges and universities provide all students with equal access to education and educational facilities. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 mandates that reasonable accommodations must be provided to students with disabilities and can […]

Google Map Project

January 11, 2019

Digital maps and related applications are indispensable for our students’ geo-spatial, contextual, and phenomenological navigation through the world. Researchers at the MIT Media Lab posit that the human brain is a “system in which affective functions and cognitive ones are inextricably integrated with one another.”[1]  To take advantage of this connection I designed a learning […]

What does it mean to have an equitable classroom?

January 4, 2019

What does it mean to have an equitable classroom? I believe that an equitable classroom is a place where each member remembers that each other member is a whole person. And, as instructors, we remember that even if the students are not content experts in the material being learned, they can engage in their own […]

From the AHTR Archives: Wrapping up with student reflections

December 14, 2018

Editor’s note: This post was originally published as “Wrapping Up: asking students to reflect and evaluate” on Dec. 3, 2013.  Please share your own experiences with assigning course reflections at the end of the semester in the comments below or with AHTR’s public group on Facebook.     We’re nearly at the end of the semester […]

Questioning The Ethics Of Required Textbooks

December 7, 2018

This fall, I had the opportunity to teach a first-year seminar: basically, a course designed to introduce new students to the college experience and the values of a liberal arts education. While the students were generally excited about the start of this new phase of their lives, most were also a bit understandably anxious. They […]

Reinserting the Fat Body into Fashion History—A Reading List

November 30, 2018

Much as in the discipline of art history, the history of fashion has tended to focus on the stories and output of great designers, or the artists of our field. The privileging of these so-called “hemline histories,” however, has problematically been at the expense of stories that recount everyday dress practices and the fashion histories of the marginal, the non-Western and, perhaps most importantly, the non-White.

From the AHTR Archives: Engaging AP Art History Students at Louisville’s Speed Art Museum

November 16, 2018

Editors’ note: This post originally appeared in December 2016 as part of AHTR’s ongoing effort to support educators in AP Art History and other K-12 learning settings. Please contact us at info@arthistorytr.org if you’re interested in contributing your experiments and ideas for art history instruction to high school students.    The redesigned AP Art History […]

From the AHTR Archives: The Plagiarism Chronicles . . .

October 26, 2018

 [Plagiarism (1621) from L.plagiarius “kidnapper, seducer, plunderer,” used in the sense of “literary thief.”] It’s mid-semester.  By now, our survey students are getting into the swing of things – they’ve turned in a few assignments, and possibly taken a midterm exam. It’s around this time when we start to notice one of the major issues related to teaching the survey course: plagiarism. Plagiarism is […]

A Digital Humanities Project: The Fashion and Race Database

October 14, 2018

The goal for The Fashion and Race Database Project is to provide a dedicated platform with open-source that address the intersection of power, privilege, representation, and aesthetics within the fashion system.

Getting Started with Digital Humanities in the Classroom

October 12, 2018

Introduction “I have this idea for adding a digital assignment to my course. I just don’t think I have the time or the skills to teach it!” This is the kind of statement I and my digital humanities colleagues hear from instructors on a regular basis. I’m here to tell you that you likely do […]

The Fashion History Timeline: Rethinking Student Research as Public Scholarship

September 7, 2018

For a long time, I have been frustrated that student research and writing is so often lost—effectively erased from the scholarly conversation. After all, thousands of undergraduate and graduate students take art history courses and write papers every year. Yet often the only audience for that research is the class or even just the professor. […]

Open Arts Objects: teaching Art History at a distance

August 31, 2018

How do we make Art History easier to teach? How can we bring the museum into the classroom? How do we widen participation in a discipline that is often seen as elitist?

OERs

August 26, 2018

AHTR has happily been the recipient of the good graces of CUNY (The City University of New York) for two recent projects. Last week we debuted several additions to the Visiting the Museum Resource. This week we are excited to announce the development of successful models for using Open Educational Resources (OERs). Created in collaboration with […]

AHTR’s Visiting the Museum Learning Resource

August 17, 2018

AHTR is excited to announce its Visiting the Museum Learning Resource. Over the summer, we’ve been adding new lesson plans, assignment ideas, bibliography, and strategies to help faculty and students better integrate museum visits in their study of art and art history. While adaptable to all academic levels, the materials on AHTR are designed with […]

Welcome Back! Fall 2018

August 10, 2018

The start of a new semester often brings academics anxiety about everything we must do in the coming weeks, and frustration at the goals we were unable to realize over the summer.  As we begin the busyness of fall, all of us at AHTR ask you to take a moment to reflect on the positive. […]

Summer Break!

June 3, 2018

Happy summer break! AHTR is taking its annual, and much needed, hiatus until August. We have some exciting information to share with you all. Starting in this August, we are changing the posting schedule for the AHTR Weekly. We’ve noted that as we have typically post near the end of August that this schedule does […]

Reflections on CAA’s 2018 SoTL Bootcamp

May 11, 2018

In February, CAA’s Education Committee organized a one-day Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Bootcamp in conjunction with its 2018 Annual Conference. Supported by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the University of Southern California, AHSC (Art Historians of Southern California), and CAA, this free workshop attracted about 30 participants interested in learning more about SoTL. […]

NEW WAYS OF SEEING: Reframing the Formal Analysis Assignment through Digital

May 5, 2018

Each semester I teach multiple sections of a general education, non-major lecture Art Appreciation class designed to cultivate personal engagement with the Houston art community outside of the classroom at Houston Community College. Some sections are face to face, others are online.   My goal for all students is to make them art citizens engaged in […]

Bye, Bye Survey Textbook

May 4, 2018

For a start, the books – pick any of the “big name” survey textbooks – are constantly going through editions for the purpose of making money (and improving images, text, etc – but really, baseline profit is the reason). The newest editions of any of them are well over $100. This is a great deal […]

One Objective, Four Ways to Meet It; Replacing High-Stakes Exams with Multi-Option Creative Assessments

April 22, 2018

A recent pile of grading for my introductory course in Modern Art History featured a fact-filled (but fictional) short-story about Odilon Redon’s best friend, an ink drawing of a Mexican folktale completed in the style of Aubrey Beardsley, a video-presentation in which a student walked her viewers through the main characteristics of several late-19th century […]

EVERY BODY: Physical Engagement and Making in Portfolio Assessments for the General Education Art History Survey

April 18, 2018

A number of years ago I was at the Art Institute of Chicago with a group of students from my AP art history class at a Chicago public high school. On entering the gallery dominated by El Greco’s 13-foot-high Assumption of the Virgin one student sank to the floor in front of the painting, calling […]

When the Projector Fails: Transforming the slide exam with personal digital devices

April 14, 2018

 For several years I’ve been experimenting with helping my students use their personal digital devices to learn to be active viewers and collaborators. On their screens, students can enter a searchable world of almost unlimited virtual images.  This technology permits two different changes to traditional art history pedagogy: changing content, and changing skills for approaching […]

Not Your Professor’s Term Paper: The Thrill of Victory, the Agony of Defeat in an eBay Auction

April 8, 2018

Notification:  “Watch Item Reminder: Ending Soon!” “HIGH BIDDER: You’re the Highest Bidder, “OUTBID: You’ve been outbid!” “Sorry you missed out on this item.” “Congratulations! You won this item.” “PAID: You paid, but the seller still needs to ship your item.” “SHIPPED: your item is on its way.” “DELIVERED: Your item has been delivered.”   *** […]

Three Alternatives for the Final Exam

April 4, 2018

Art History taken by our majors and non-majors at introductory levels  are offered both online and face to face.  Our college serves students from ages 16 to 60, some dually enrolled in high school and in college, and from any one of the tri-county areas.  Their socioeconomic levels cover a wide range, as do their […]

Agency in Test Design as Motivation for Art History Students

March 30, 2018

In the middle of the Indian Ocean, somewhere between South Africa and India, the time came to post a description of the midterm for my Introduction to the Visual Arts course that I was teaching with Semester at Sea in Fall 2017. As I have been doing on my home campus for the past 5 […]

RTTP as Final Exam

March 28, 2018

The syllabus for my survey class reads, “The game counts as your final exam and final project,” and goes on to say, “Participation and research of the game world and your character are required. You will be graded on 1. your in-class participation, speeches, and debates; 2. writing; 3. teamwork; 4. performance at the Exposition. […]

Renaming the Baroque: An Alternative Art History Term Paper

March 21, 2018

When teaching courses in the Renaissance and Baroque, I regularly begin with a discussion of the name used to describe the period.  I include not only an explanation of what “Renaissance” or “Baroque” means and how that definition relates to the period, but encourage students to reflect upon the appropriateness of the name.  For example, I ask my students to consider the impact of using a word with some negative associations (“baroque” as a term deriving from a Portuguese word for an irregular pearl.) When giving this lecture, I would often make an off-hand comment to the effect of “but no one has thought of a better term.”  It occurred to me that I could set this task to my students.

Learning and Unlearning: Using hands-on Bauhaus exercises in art history classes

March 18, 2018

At its heart, the Bauhaus – with all of its far-reaching design goals and wide-ranging art historical influence – was a school. From 1919 to 1933, creative women and men went to its various buildings (first in Weimar, then Dessau, then Berlin) to learn modern ways of making things. So, of course, there were countless Bauhaus assignments related […]

In the Global Studio: Inspiring Creativity through Online Courses

March 4, 2018

We know that as many jobs are lost to automation in the coming years, and as the cost of higher education continues to rise and make traditional universities even more unaffordable, online education will become even more crucial. Museum-based MOOCs and other digital learning opportunities connect people with the history of human creativity and invite them to tap into their own.

Re-Creating Indus Valley Seals: An In-Class Activity

March 1, 2018

At my university, as I believe is now common at many institutions, the Art History program is embedded within the Art Department, so my colleagues are Studio Artists, Graphic Designers, and Art Therapists.  I consider myself incredibly fortunate to work with colleagues who are enthusiastic about opportunities to collaborate, and so I have tried to […]

Heading to CAA2018? Here’s a list of pedagogical sessions to consider.

February 18, 2018

Many thanks to Ellen Osterkamp for compiling this comprehensive list of pedagogical sessions scheduled this year at CAA. We hope to see you there and please consider contacting us to share your thoughts and reflections on all things teaching and learning covered during the conference!   WEDNESDAY (2/21/18) “Practical Approaches and Collaborations: A Session to Share […]

From AHTR’s Archives: Teaching ain’t just lectures: On Letters of Recommendations

February 9, 2018

Yep, it’s almost that time of year!  We pulled this great post from 2014  to offer some helpful hints and guidance in writing letters of recommendation.  Enjoy! I wrote my first letter of recommendation about seven or eight years ago when I was a teaching assistant while pursuing my M.A. in art history. The student was enrolled in […]

Debating Cultural Appropriation in the Art History Classroom

January 28, 2018

I am always looking for activities that make art history relevant to my students as well as disturb the problematic ways in which our discipline has been framed. Students respond enthusiastically when they are allowed to delve into current events that connect with art’s histories. In order to facilitate what can be heated conversations I […]

TeachOER.org

January 19, 2018

While Open Educational Resources (OERs) have received considerable attention as a means to diversify and expand access to course materials while saving students money, these extensive resources remain mostly uncharted territory for many teachers. Not all OERs are equally meaningful or accessible to learners, and faculty often encounter difficulty navigating numerous (and dated) OER outlets […]

CAA Conversations: Podcasts on Teaching and Learning

In October, 2017 the College Art Association launched a podcast series as part of CAA Conversations. An initiative of CAA’s Education Committee, the podcast project is designed to focus on current issues of teaching and professional development.  Released in the CAA News Monday newsletter, each weekly segment features two colleagues discussing a wide variety of topics. […]

Going to LA? Don’t forget to sign up for CAA’s SoTL Bootcamp!

January 5, 2018

Effective pedagogy demands creativity, experimentation, and ongoing evaluation of teaching practice. Applying our scholarly skills to investigate these efforts can demonstrate the value of the time and energy we spend in the classroom.   Learn to produce and publish scholarship on your questions of teaching and learning in art history, reflect on your pedagogical interests […]

The (Contemporary) Art History Mixtape: Setting the Tone in the Classroom with Music

December 2, 2017

Scene: a low lit classroom filled with sleepy students mindlessly swiping at their phones and numbed by the hypnotic hum of a projector. Enter the professor, expected to perform, to teach, dare I say entertain. But how can we enliven this familiar weekly song and dance? Perhaps with a song? Or maybe a mixtape? Starting […]

Bomb the Church

November 28, 2017

Upon learning of the Taliban-driven destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan in 2001, I remembered an article that I’d read in a Philosophy of Art class in graduate school so many years ago:  Albert Elsen’s ‘Bomb the Church:  What We Don’t Teach Our Students in Art 1.’  [Editors’ note: a version can be found […]

What’s Your Sutori? Interactive Study Guides and Active Note-Taking

November 17, 2017

Over the years, I can’t adequately express how many different types of “study guides” I have created and abandoned in preparation for art history exams. Everything from bullet-point lists of artworks to Word documents outlining terms and big-picture questions to Powerpoint slides with all required artworks and identifications. If you name it, I’ve probably tried […]

Using Open Educational Resources in Art History Courses: Asian and Islamic Arts

November 14, 2017

Students, parents, and politicians complain that rising costs have resulted in staggering student debt and the inaccessibility of higher education for many students who otherwise would pursue college degrees.  Commercial textbook prices contribute to the problem: According to the College Board’s Annual Survey of Colleges, students enrolled in a four-year public university will spend approximately […]

SECAC Summary: Pedagogically Sound Approaches for Hybrid and Online Learning

November 5, 2017

In October 2017, AHTR held a session at SECAC in Columbus, Ohio (go Buckeyes!) titled Pedagogically Sound Approaches for Hybrid and Online Learning. The abstract reads as follows: Technologically supported long-distance learning has become integral in higher education initiatives.  Hybrid and online courses allow flexibility in student learning in university and museum education departments. They […]

Hybrid Survey, Active Learning, and Digital Exhibitions

October 21, 2017

This semester I am teaching the first part of the western art survey in a hybrid format. Students engage via our content management system; but we also meet face to face. And when we do I want those experiences to be more active types of engagements with the works of art and the ideas of the class. This summer, I was reading an article about the importance of “apprenticeship” and it got me thinking about art history …

Creating a More Accessible Art History Course through 3D Printing

October 13, 2017

There are ways to create more accessible art history courses, as I discovered last year when I taught a student who is blind in my prehistoric to medieval art history survey. While I am still learning how to design an effective art history course for a student with a visual impairment, I wanted to share what I have discovered so far, focusing on one particularly effective tool: 3D printing.

Understanding Geometry and Cathedral Design Through Experiential Learning

October 11, 2017

Overview The beauty and grandeur of medieval cathedrals lies not only in their sheer size, but also in the harmonious proportions that result from using principles of ancient geometry in their design. This experiential learning project demonstrates the interrelationship of mathematics and design in medieval architecture through the practical application of geometry. Reading assignments (see below) should be completed […]

“Celtic” Crosses and White Supremacism

September 29, 2017

[Editors’s note: This post was originally published on on the wonderful website Material Collective. Maggie Williams, the author and c-founder of Material Collective, was kind enough to allow re-posting on AHTR. The original post can be found here.]   In 2012, I published a book that was inspired by my 2001 dissertation on Irish crosses. In […]

Profound Choice: On Balancing Access, Advocacy + Exposure to the Arts

September 23, 2017

Years ago I was running a partnership program within a secure juvenile detention facility located in the South Bronx, bringing in reproductions of artwork along with as many court-approved materials as possible for our studio projects. (My first attempt at a collage-based workshop was scrapped when I naively failed to realize that, of course, scissors […]

The Art of Engineering

September 17, 2017

The current trend at many technical and community colleges to tailor course offerings toward job preparation and to advocate STEM education at the expense of the humanities can be viewed as a threat to the long-term health of visual arts education. Whether we perceive the STEM-centered educational movement as a threat or otherwise, it is […]

Intersecting Art and Science: Curation, Curriculum, and Collaboration

September 12, 2017

Experiential learning has value across the disciplines.^[1] Educational research has shown this method as one of the foremost ways to train students, and these ideas have been particularly influential in minting new scientists and engineers.

Museums: Writing Exhibition Reviews

September 1, 2017

Teaching art history, as with any discipline, comes with a set of obstacles: from the intellectual (how to make the past relevant to the present); to the technical (the problems of the digitization that distort image quality, scale, and size); and to the practical (the prickly but persistent question of what one does with an […]

Fall …..

August 27, 2017

AHTR is excited to begin our Weekly posts this coming Friday, September 1.

Advancing Participation in the Survey

May 8, 2017

It comes as no surprise that as higher education emphasizes job training, students place a higher priority on classes they view as favorable to the acquisition of highly marketable skills over educationally enriching experiences. Without some demonstration of career utility, courses like art history serve as just another core requirement to be endured, rather than […]

Hands On History: Learning the History of Typography with a Letterpress Workshop

May 1, 2017

In recent years, educators have been encouraged to promote “active learning” in their classrooms. While this is heavily advocated in K-12 education, it is also making more appearances in approaches to higher education. Interactive learning or multi-modal learning is a teaching strategy that allows a topic to be explored through multiple learning styles such as […]

Developing Student Expertise with Digital Resources from the NGA

April 21, 2017

In my own experience of museum and classroom-based teaching, I have found that an obstacle to continued arts education or the advancement of students beyond a survey level of art history is too often a function of pedagogy that doesn’t acknowledge or develop students’ ability to participate in the greater arts world. Asking students to […]

Teaching Comics and Graphic Novels as Art History

April 14, 2017

In the past decade comics have established a small but growing beachhead in academia, following earlier advances in the critical attention paid to them by newspapers, magazines, and journals and the institutional recognition accorded them by museums and libraries. Courses on comics are now taught regularly in literature departments at many universities but only a handful of art history departments offer courses on comics and very few art historians do research on comics. This is a shame because comics (and graphic novels, which are really just longer comics with a fancier name) are a vital part of modern and contemporary visual culture.

Pedagogic Approaches to Teaching with Art in the Sciences

April 12, 2017

When dealing with courses in the hard and life sciences, we approach engagement with art slightly differently. Founded on the types of interactions with the collection that STEM faculty tend to request and on the recent pedagogic emphasis on active, inquiry-based learning that also touches on the creative aspects of science, we distinguish four kinds of interactions with art: skill-building, thematic, problem-based and dispositional.

Hands-on Learning in AP Art History

April 7, 2017

Since art history is an image-based subject, it is naturally one that lends itself easily to hands-on, project-based learning where students are given control of their learning and are researching works of art for themselves.

Navigating Space and Place: Digital Cartography in the Classroom

March 31, 2017

As art historians, we are constantly asking students to examine and interpret complex compositions—be it in painting, architecture, sculpture, or photography—in a search of meaning. Considering the fundamental links between our disciplines, I want to make the case for using digital cartography in the classroom as an opportunity to get students (and ourselves) to think about how space and geography impact artistic interpretation.

“Walking on the Grass: Using Campus as Source Material”

March 27, 2017

Monmouth University’s Department of Art and Design offers majors in studio arts, photography, graphic and interactive design, animation, and a minor in art history. As part of art foundations our majors must pass two sections of the History of Western Art—Part I (Prehistoric to Gothic) and Part II (Renaissance to Contemporary), plus one or two […]

Collaborative Zines: Making Art History Accessible to Pre-Service Educators

March 24, 2017

As new, digital technologies emerge and improve–from augmented and virtual realities to advancements in 3D printing to smart phone capabilities–there has also been a notable resurgence of analog technologies. Vinyl records and cassette tapes, Polaroid cameras and film and even typewriters are being produced at increased rates. With this resurges comes a renewed interest in […]

STEM to STEAM in the Academic Museum

March 20, 2017

A number of authors, including David Sousa and Tom Pilecki, have described the benefits of arts integration in publications and lectures, and supported this move from STEM to STEAM. Drawing from my contribution to a College Art Association panel on the role of art history in STEAM, two case studies from the Colby College Museum of Art offer potential models for how such collaborations might occur.

Virtual Reality in the Art History Classroom

March 15, 2017

I recently become fascinated with virtual reality and the realism I experience by viewing through a small boxlike device- in this case, Google Cardboard.  I wondered if there could be connections made between virtual reality and my survey art history course for students at Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh, NY.  I began by searching […]

ARTmap: A New Paradigm for Teaching Art History to the Online Learner

March 10, 2017

I began to ask myself, “how do I capture the texture and context of the live educational environment and put it online?” An accountability of interest became the thesis of my quest. If I was bored with the curriculum, I knew that my students would be, too….

Student Dialogues and Scholarly Discourse: Helping Undergraduates Join the Conversation

March 9, 2017

In the last week of February, students in my Art History Survey I course at the University of Colorado Denver presented a series of scripted conversations focused primarily on artworks from the Denver Art Museum. These presentations were the culmination of what I call the “Artwork Dialogue” assignment. While introducing students to local museum collections […]

The Skillful Curator: A Case Study in Curatorial Pedagogy and Collective Exhibition-Making

March 3, 2017

For my recent contribution to a College Art Association panel on pedagogy, feminism and activism, I presented as a case study a graduate curatorial practice course I developed at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) for which I curated an exhibition alongside sixteen students. While the curatorial field is considered hospitable to […]

Appalachian Identities and Photography as Social Commentary

February 25, 2017

Through in-class discussion and office hour chats, I have learned that many of my students feel strong ties to an Appalachian identity. Some struggle to maintain a connection to home, the mountains, and deep family bonds and traditions while fighting against stereotypical representations of the region and the very real problems eastern Kentuckians face: poverty, poor health, addiction, and unemployment.

CAA 2017 Panels on Pedagogy

February 12, 2017

We at AHTR are looking forward to seeing friends, colleagues, and meeting new faces at CAA 2017. Here’s a list assembled of all the pedagogy-related panels at CAA this coming week.

Entering the Conversation: Using Student Blogging to Encourage Original Writing, Critical Thinking, and Personal Investment

February 3, 2017

During the fall 2016 semester, I taught Art Since 1945 and utilized WordPress as an online platform for four writing assignments. My goal was that this series of assignments would encourage students to “enter the conversation” and become engaged practitioners in writing about contemporary art.

Bridging the Gap: Art and Popular Culture in the Formal Analysis Comparison

January 5, 2017

Editors’ note: This post is part of our ongoing series on Writing about Art. Here, Dr. Mary Slavkin explores new ways to approach the traditional formal analysis paper assigned in most art history survey courses. Hallie Scott’s AHTR post #arthistory: Instagram and the Intro to Art History Course led me to retool my formal analysis comparison […]

Happy New Year from AHTR!

December 31, 2016

Only one week after publication, articles from AHPP had been downloaded 1035 times by readers at 71 institutions in 36 countries. We are thrilled to support this scholarship and dialogue, and look forward to more next year. 

Engaging AP Art History Students at Louisville’s Speed Art Museum

December 9, 2016

The redesigned AP Art History curriculum, which debuted for the May 2016 APAH exam provides an excellent opportunity for student engagement with a local museum’s collection. The curriculum encourages this relationship by specifically referencing the importance of museum visits as a part of formal assessment and contextual analysis. Like other APAH teachers I am excited […]

Google Art Project to Prezi: Jackson Pollock and Thomas Kinkade

December 2, 2016

In a previous article on Art History Teaching Resources, I outlined my experiences using Google Arts Project (GAP) in my online art history classes to create virtual exhibitions. At the time, GAP was the only online program that offered its users the ability to create their own exhibition complete with text and image without having […]

Researching Globally with an Online Resource from The Museum of Modern Art

November 18, 2016

We would like to introduce museum and classroom educators to this free, online resource on global art from The Museum of Modern Art. Featuring essays, interviews, archival materials, bibliographies and more that reflect new perspectives emerging in art history today, post makes an excellent supplement to courses on non-Western art at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Crash and Burn

November 12, 2016

Your course plan looked great on paper. It passed departmental faculty review. Perhaps it even integrated some progressive pedagogical experimentations. In sum, the class held real promise. But when it got to the classroom, your first-run of the course was received with far less enthusiasm than you anticipated. Really, it crashed and burned. You begin […]

Putting Words in Their Mouths: Using Art History to Help the Art Student with the Artist Statement

November 4, 2016

Teaching the art history survey at an arts college undoubtedly has its advantages: students come primed with an understanding of the techniques and challenges of various art forms and, quite often, they are also very passionate about their artistic opinions.  One of the most heated debates that often arises, for example, is that surrounding the […]

Rationales and Realities in Assigning Research Papers at SECAC

October 28, 2016

Last year I chaired a session on survey classes at SECAC and I got so many new ideas, that I decided to propose another pedagogy session this year. While I always love regular conference sessions in my own field, sessions on pedagogy always end up being incredibly invigorating, giving me new ideas and getting me […]

Bringing the Museum to AP Art History—a Model for Collaboration

October 21, 2016

The Challenge In 2015-16, the College Board rolled out its redesigned AP Art History course.  The new curriculum moved away from a largely Western and Eurocentric curriculum to a more holistic understanding of art history from a global perspective.  As a high school teacher, the difficulty inherent to this new curriculum revolved not only around […]

Learning to Look Critically with The Museum of Modern Art’s “Seeing Through Photographs” MOOC

October 14, 2016

The following is a reflection on the genesis of MoMA’s recent MOOC on Photography. We hope this post will introduce museum and classroom teachers to this MoMA resource on photography and encourage its use, where appropriate, as self-guided learning for your students and as a supplementary resource for survey and elective courses in this area of art history and practice.

A Superficial Glance: An appeal for deeper insight into paintings

October 7, 2016

Contemporary scientific methods allow us to peek beneath the surface of the painting. I would like to argue that a look beneath the surface of a painting offers a deeper insight into its materiality, and the specific technical and cultural context of its maker(s).

The TeachArt Wiki

September 30, 2016

A number of years ago while taking a break from grading the term papers of a large survey course in which students were assigned to visit a museum and write about an artwork of their choice, I commented to my wife and colleague, Guey-Meei Yang, about each semester feeling like the movie Groundhog Day as […]

The Out-of-Town Class Trip to the Museum

September 23, 2016

When I began teaching as a graduate student, it was in New York, and the resources of the city were at my fingertips.  Every semester, I sent my students to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or the Frick, or the Brooklyn Museum, for the invaluable experience of seeing representative art from the course, in person.  […]

Acting Out: Teaching Music History with Role-Playing

September 9, 2016

[Editors’ note: In August, Karen and Parme attended the Arts in Society Conference, an interdisciplinary forum for discussion of the role of the arts in society. They presented “AHTR: An OER Community for Pedagogical Practice in Art History,” which served to present AHTR and the new journal, Art History Pedagogy and Practice, to those in […]

Welcome to the fall 2016 semester from AHTR!

September 3, 2016

As you prepare your courses for the fall, please keep in mind the many resources available at ATHR.  Explore the thematic lesson plans that offer different ways to engage students in art history. For 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.

CfP: Submit to the “AHTR Weekly” for fall 2016

August 22, 2016

Beginning fall  2016-17, the AHTR Weekly would like to hold open a number of posts for new submissions alongside programmed contributions from invited writers. We hope that this will allow AHTR Weekly to continue to serve the broadest number of peers, as well as to expand and elevate the discussions. If you would like to propose a post for fall 2016 or spring 2017, please get in touch at info@arthistoryTR.org.

Happy Summer + AHTR CAA 2017 Panel + AHPP CfP

June 25, 2016

As we head into the summer we wanted to flag two opportunities to share your research and practice with the field.

The Scaffolded Research Paper

June 4, 2016

One of the staples of any upper-level art history course is the research paper. These papers can range from deep dives into one work of art from a local collection to thematic explorations that traverse various styles and media. When done well, these assignments can be a true intellectual pleasure. When done poorly, the research paper can feel like a chore. We can, however, take steps to increase the incidence of pleasurable and rewarding research papers and decrease the dreaded end-of-term chores. One strategy I have found to be particularly effective is what is now commonly called “scaffolding.”

The Rare Experience of Punctum

May 27, 2016

I am not sure which course/professor brought Barthes’s text Camera Lucida into my life, but thank you. I return to this book again and again. As a community college professor, I look for texts that are approachable in reading level but that have concepts to bolster critical thinking. Camera Lucida does just that with its blend of narrative storytelling, photograph description, and philosophical terms and analysis. We read from this book on Day 1 of class and define studium and punctum collaboratively on the white board.

Debating Ethics and Issues in Art History

May 21, 2016

This past year, in an introductory survey course, I experimented with the format of a debate to engage students in the history of art and our responsibility to this history in the present. The debate required students to take up a position on an issue and argue their case, giving them an opportunity to engage with art history in a new way.

What Inspires Your Museum-Based Teaching?

May 13, 2016

I reached out at the end of the spring semester and asked a few colleagues and friends in museum education to briefly describe what inspires their museum-based teaching. Below, you’ll find their responses. Thanks to everyone who participated!

Teaching Art History Online: Collaborative vs. Individual Virtual Exhibition Projects

May 7, 2016

I decided to forego the traditional research paper and have my students work in small groups to create online exhibitions. I had used the virtual exhibition assignment previously with great success in on-campus classes with non-majors and adult continued education. The difference would be that instead of using PowerPoint, my online students would use an online program: Google Art Project.

Teaching Feminism +Art History: Intersectionality

April 29, 2016

Philosophy and Visual Culture

April 22, 2016

As a philosophy professor, I use images of artworks in my teaching often, by way of rendering philosophical ideas more accessible to my students, and also for the sheer delight of looking at art (some of them have apparently not experienced this!). In doing so I assume that a work of art is a concrete […]

Teaching Violence, Destruction, and Propaganda at Nimrud in Antiquity and Today

April 10, 2016

When I asked the students in my freshman survey what they thought of when they considered the terms “art” and “history,” ISIS’ recent spate of destruction came up almost immediately. I began to think about how I might integrate a discussion of the recent events into my survey syllabus. I decided it was not enough to talk about what ISIS is doing; I wanted to address how they use visual media to accomplish their aims.

Writing about Art Forming Relationships with Colleagues on Campus and Reinforcing the Basic Skills

April 3, 2016

[Editor note: This post is part of our 2016 series on Writing about Art. This installment comes from Craig Houser, who teaches full time in the Art Department and is the co-director of Art History at the City College of New York.] CCNY requires its undergraduate students to take two writing-intensive courses: a Freshman Inquiry […]

Seeing Music

April 1, 2016

While I was working at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, I attended a session about Visual Thinking Strategies. The method’s ingenuity lies in its simplicity; participants study an image and their observations are teased out with subtle and careful questions, revealing a startling level of nuance. It struck me as a wonderfully refreshing way to engage students in a conversation about the unfamiliar, and I started to wonder if some of these principles could be applied to the study of music.

Art Teaching & Art History: A Reflection on BHQF’s Radical Pedagogy Working Group

March 27, 2016

The first meeting of BHQFU’s Radical Pedagogy Working Group, held a few Wednesday evenings ago, centered on aims for the spring. What did we want from this investigation of art teaching? Some wanted support and solidarity, others preferred arguments, some looked for inspiration, and others for concrete strategies. I hadn’t formulated particular aims for the […]

Reacting to the Past in Practice

March 25, 2016

I discovered Reacting to the Past last summer after a particularly challenging semester. For the most part, my students did relatively well; however, more than half of them were disengaged in class. What was going on?

Reacting to the Past: Art in Paris, 1888-89

March 18, 2016

In 2006 I attended my first Reacting to the Past annual Institute at Barnard College in New York City. I went with the worst attitude imaginable. And it was August and sweltering in New York. And I had to stay in a residence hall. Games for teaching sounded juvenile (oh, can you hear the whining?). I was […]

Every Museum Is a Museum of Symmetries

March 12, 2016

Exposure to and participation in the arts enriches students’ college experiences and greatly enhances their abilities to learn, understand, and function across a range of critical literacies. This post is the first in a short series that explores the use of visual culture in disciplines other than art history.

Managing a MOOC

March 4, 2016

Several years ago I wrote a MOOC, The Modern Genius: Art and Culture in the 19^th Century. I had never assigned the MOOC course to any of my students, but that changed this January, when my Honors Modern Art students enrolled in the MOOC and we experimented with a completely flipped classroom.

Flip that Class

February 24, 2016

I know many people have heard of the “flipped” method of education. Essentially, it is the paradigm of old: students do homework and come to class prepared and then new material is covered. I’ve heard many faculty in higher education scoff at this method, saying that it’s actually “what they have always done.” But how […]

Call for the Archive

February 19, 2016

  A short post this week reminding the AHTR community of the new Archive initiative. We usually use the Weekly soon after CAA or SECAC to post a summation of the pedagogy sessions in which AHTR has participated. But now, with the Archive, which we hope to launch in the next few months, this would […]

Plein Air Learning

February 13, 2016

Art and the Environment is a 400-level course covering a broad expanse of time, from prehistoric art to recently completed eco-art projects. A portion of the course is devoted to studying the representation of landscape as a reflection of the concerns and issues of the times in which they are made. Last semester, I piloted […]

AHTR at CAA

February 8, 2016

We survived CAA! Thanks to all of the folks who came out to the two meet-and-greets. We enjoyed seeing old friends and meeting so many of you. It was great to finally meet in person some of the many wonderful contributors to the site. It was a pleasure to hear about how AHTR is used […]

Writing About Art

January 31, 2016

Welcome to the 2016 Writing About Art series on AHTR Weekly. As art history instructors, many of us struggle with teaching writing as part of our course material. Even though art history presents a wonderful framework within which to scaffold basic writing and research skills, we often find ourselves ill-prepared for tackling the complexities of […]

Happy Break! Some News and Updates from AHTR

December 18, 2015

With the last gasps of the Fall semester,  we all may be feeling a bit overwhelmed with year-end obligations. Rather than our usual post, we thought it would be a good moment to take a breath and tell you about some of the exciting things on the horizon for AHTR in the Spring. We begin by […]

Art History, Feminism, and Wikipedia

December 11, 2015

    Could Wikipedia be a new frontier in art history? What might the Internet’s most popular general reference and free-access encyclopedia (not to mention the fifth-largest website in the world) offer a centuries-old academic discipline? How might its participatory model – the fact that anyone can access and edit most of its articles – […]

Collaborative Definitions

December 4, 2015

“What is DH? And what does it have to do with studying architecture and cities?”

Collaborating with CAA: Committee on Diversity Practice’s Resource Directory

November 28, 2015

As a classroom tool, the CAA Committee on Diversity Practice’s Resource Directory provides an innovative way to teach students about the use of primary source documents and online image databases.

More from n.paradoxa! (Feminism and the Visual Arts)

November 20, 2015

This year, I’ve developed three new resources on my website at www.ktpress.co.uk which I hope will extend the range of access, possibility and topics for students and teachers working on contemporary art and feminism.

SECAC2015 Reflection: Socially Engaged Art History

November 13, 2015

Friday morning conference sessions that start at 8am aren’t typically standing-room only. But this was not a typical session. The gregarious early-bird response to the SECAC 2015 panel on “Socially Engaged Art History” can be attributed to the co-chairs’ keen conceptualization of their subject along with the groundswell of interest among art historians for what it augurs in our field.

A Postmortem: Textbook-Free Survey, The One-Year Anniversary

November 6, 2015

Driven by concerns about the rising cost of art-history textbooks, I developed and launched a year-long textbook-free teaching experiment for a global art-history survey course covering the art from the Renaissance up to today at the University of Mississippi from Fall 2014-Fall 2015. [I wrote a post about my early process here.] I taught using […]

Building a Teaching Materials Collection

November 1, 2015

Many of us become art historians because we love the materiality of things—the solid heft and feel of objects, the way that time marks its slow passage across their surfaces. We are seduced by the sharp scent of limestone in a medieval cathedral, the warp and weft of red silk damask decorating the walls of […]

Surveying the Survey at SECAC

October 30, 2015

Every pedagogy session I attend at SECAC  is incredibly well-attended and produces endless questions and wonderful discussions. This year, when the call for session proposals came out, I was rethinking my own survey class, planning on going text-book-free and poring over every page on AHTR. I decided to do my part in creating the type […]

Art and the #FergusonSyllabus

October 16, 2015

This past summer, I led a seminar inspired by the #FergusonSyllabus movement that Georgetown history professor Marcia Chatelain started back in August of 2014, in the wake of Michael Brown’s death, the protests in Ferguson, and the delayed start to school.                Chatelain wrote an article for the  Atlantic […]

Lects in the City

October 12, 2015

Although I have worked as a professor, my first experience with teaching has been through working as a walking tour guide in New York City, which I have done regularly since 2011. My experience as a tour guide has informed my style of teaching, and the two kindred practices enhance one another. Below are a […]

Puzzling Through Early Medieval Manuscripts: An In-Class Exercise

October 2, 2015

Whenever I talk with fellow art historians about teaching, one common question that arises is how to get our students to be more active in their observations of artworks. How do we cultivate (and inspire a love of) looking at art, rather than simply seeing or scanning it? One traditional–and effective–method is to encourage students […]

Teaching from a Feminist Revisionist Perspective

September 25, 2015

Feminist art history has two meanings: the study of feminist art made from the late 1960s to the present and a revisionist reading of the history of art to examine women and their images and involvement as artists and patrons. I want to consider the second version here to clarify what a feminist revisionist reading […]

Pedagogy through Observation

September 18, 2015

How do we learn to teach?  Can we learn through reading, through observation, or only through the actual practice of teaching?  What are the most useful things we can do to prepare before entering the classroom?  How can we “find our voice” as teachers, and formulate our own unique style? These were some of the […]

Slow Teaching

September 11, 2015

At some point on the first day of classes I am going to ask my students to answer some questions anonymously. In all honesty, why did you enroll in this course? What final grade you would be happy with? What about this class are you most concerned or anxious about? Exploring students’ responses over the […]

Field Notes from an Experiment in Student-Centered Pedagogy

September 4, 2015

How can art history be made engaging and relevant to students coming at the topic from diverse disciplines and backgrounds? How can students gain agency in the process of studying historic art and architecture? To what extent can an art history survey be participatory and student-driven? I frequently grappled with these questions while working as […]

AHTRchat: Syllabus Planning

August 6, 2015

On Wednesday August 5, Art History Teaching Resources held our first #AHTRchat to discuss syllabus planning and brainstorm about resources for our classes. We kicked it off by discussing how to plan a course without using a textbook.

An AHTR Twitter Chat: Syllabus Planning

July 29, 2015

What’s going on? If you’ve been thinking summer would be a great time to start prepping classes for the fall, but haven’t quite gotten around to it, AHTR has plans to help you out!  Join us on Twitter for an #AHTRchat on Wednesday August 5, between 7-8pm (EST) to talk about syllabus planning.  Topics may […]

Interactivity and Communication in the Art History Classroom

June 19, 2015

This semester I taught two courses, one was a larger lecture course on Southern Baroque art and architecture, and the other was a seminar course on Latin American art. Both were primarily made up of junior and senior art or architecture majors. Each class had two major interactive components. In the lecture course students chose […]

Join in! Pioneerworks Summit on Pedagogy, June 21st

June 3, 2015

In an effort to facilitate pedagogical exchange, Pioneer Works Center for Art and Innovation will host its first annual Summit on Pedagogy on June 21, 2015.

Questions for an Evolving Discipline

May 18, 2015

Digital scholars, how should your work be assessed? New technologies have complicated definitions and assessments of scholarship as many of us learn to build tools, create multi-media and non-traditional projects, and communicate our work to a wider public. As scholars, we count on feedback and reviews from peers and professors to validate and improve upon all of our […]

How to Build a Serious Art Collection with a Small Budget and Turn an Inner City Community College Campus into an Educational Art Museum

May 16, 2015

In five years, at Hudson County Community College in Jersey City, we acquired about 730 art works–500 by donation–and turned the college into an art museum, with permanent galleries of fine original art by major and emerging New Jersey and American Artists in every building’s public areas. You should do this too, because the pedagogical […]

Taking the Art History Survey Glossary Online

April 26, 2015

I recently taught an on-line art history survey course without assigning a textbook. What did I miss most? The glossary.

There’s a Game for That: Teaching Art History with “Reacting to the Past”

April 17, 2015

When faculty facilitate involvement in activities such as simulations and games, and students work collaboratively, through role-play and debate, deeper learning and transfer occurs.

Art History Today

April 10, 2015

The internet and other forms of new media have both increased the number of images we encounter on a daily basis, and also flattened the differences between them. What might these developments in both education and visual culture mean for the practice of art history today?

Into the Archives!

April 3, 2015

Last semester I decided to take 80 Intro to World Art students to do archival research. To many teachers, this might sound a bit crazy. So what possessed me? For one, I have always taught with primary sources, so why not take it one step further? Second, while my main goal is to teach art […]

AHTR Reports on AP Art History (part II)

March 27, 2015

The second of two-part series on AP Art History (see the first part here), this week’s post examines the revised APAH curriculum.

AHTR Reports on AP Art History (part I)

March 20, 2015

The first of a two-part series written by Dana Howard, Artstor’s Senior K-12 Relationship Manager, and AHTR Contributing Editor Virginia Spivey, this week’s post raises questions about the current role of art history in K-12 learning and its relationship to the discipline as a whole.

Teaching Art and Race: Bridging Gaps in the Global Survey Course

March 13, 2015

Designed to explore art internationally from pre-history through the present, the current global survey course is often problematic.

Object Based Learning: Using the Museum as a Resource

March 6, 2015

Being able to look at artwork without glass in a small space removes mental and physical barriers. The ability to clearly see how something has been made encourages the students to look much more closely.

CAA Wrap Up: What Have You Done for Art History Lately?

March 1, 2015

At the recent CAA conference, AHTR had the pleasure to participate in the forward thinking panel “What have you done for Art History Lately?” as part of the initiative Art History That (AHT).

Digital Art History for Beginners: The Spreadsheet

February 21, 2015

Digital art history is a sub-field within digital humanities (#dh). I’ve read and listened to presentations about big, well-funded digital art history projects at conferences, but I’ve been interested in teaching some of the basics of digital art history in my upper-division classes using free tools.

Why Participation? Facilitating Student Engagement in Art History Surveys

February 12, 2015

On Thursday and Friday, February 12 and 13, 2015, as part of the poster session of the College Art Association conference, I will be presenting my project, “Tweets, Secret Words, Bingos, and Blogs: Facilitating Engaged Participation in Art History Surveys.”

The Crowd-Sourced Study Guide

February 6, 2015

I won’t bury the lede: the crowd-sourced study guide gets your students to study for the test two weeks in advance.

AHTR Lesson Plan Highlights I

February 5, 2015

Since many of us are in the early weeks of the Spring 2015, we would like to draw your attention to lectures with which we typically begin the semester. The contributors of these lesson plans are as diverse as the subjects.

Talk to Your Prof…But How?

February 2, 2015

Teaching the subject and mentoring appear to go hand-in-hand with the authority to stand behind the collegiate podium. Yet, it is just this professional duality, which can muddle or tarnish the experience of the learning environment, the ultimate function of the student-professor dynamic.

New AHTR lesson plans for: Prehistory & Ancient Near East

January 31, 2015

Each week this spring, we’ll be introducing one or two of the new lesson plans on AHTR with commentary from the lesson plan authors themselves. First up–Prehistory and Ancient Near East.

AHTR Launches New Site Design & Content!

January 30, 2015

Art HistoryTeachingResources.org is very pleased to announce the launch of its new website, an open, collaborative platform for all those who teach the art history survey.

Happy Holidays from AHTR!

December 23, 2014

Before we leave you to enjoy the holiday season, we’d like to share with you a few announcements:

Keep an eye on the AHTR Journal in 2015–One of the first journal series in January will focus on survey exams.

Joint Statement from Museum Bloggers and Colleagues on Ferguson and related events

December 14, 2014

AHTR stands together with the art historians and educators who have co-signed the text below, and with the wider academic community to express solidarity with the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and to support ways in which issues of racism might be explored in a classroom context.

Can We Create a Culture That Values Good Teaching?

December 10, 2014

How might we create a culture that actually esteems effective teaching? The value of such a thing ought to be clear.

Teaching Feminism in Relation to Contemporary Art

December 2, 2014

It is possible to introduce a very broad range of examples and paradigmatic case studies of women artists’ works into every lecture offered on contemporary art.

How to Survive Teaching an Architecture Course: A Guide for Non-Architectural Art Historians

How can one grapple with architecture’s irreducibility to image if one’s area of expertise, and therefore “teaching-comfort-zone,” focuses on images?

What advice for students considering grad school in humanities?

These elements of the conversation—on the perspectives, philosophies, and realities of graduate school—are critical to the discussion we can have with our students.

Re-Designing the Survey Course, Textbook-Free

October 26, 2014

After teaching the global art history survey courses for more than a decade, the prospect of converting the class into a textbook-free one was daunting. By this point, my class runs like a well-oiled machine.

Participatory Learning in the Art History Classroom

October 19, 2014

To illustrate the way in which participatory learning can activate intellectual and critical inquiry in the art history classroom (and beyond), I’d like to present a sample assignment which relies on participatory learning.

Art History Selfie: Art Where You Live

September 21, 2014

I am contributing this as a response to Hallie Scott’s great post on her art history Instagram assignment. I teach a 3-week online western survey in summer, so one can imagine the compression ratio! Most of my students are non-majors fulfilling a lower-division, general education/arts requirement.

The Art of Skipping Centuries

September 5, 2014

This semester, I will practice the art of skipping centuries on the 6th floor of Schermerhorn Hall at Columbia University. I have been honing this unusual skill since 2007, when I was assigned the challenging task of teaching Art Humanities: Masterpieces of Western Art, a core curriculum course required of all undergraduates in the College.

Review: “MyArtsLab” (for Stokstad and Cothren’s “Art History”)

August 29, 2014

With the beginning of this school year, I am using MyArtsLab for the third semester in a row for my two sections of an Art History survey course, from Renaissance to Modern art.

Back to School: AHTR Fall 2014

August 24, 2014

AHTR is very excited about upcoming fall programming on the site. We are close to the debut of the new site!

Call for Participation

August 14, 2014

AHTR is pleased to send out the second Call for Participation. The lectures we received in response to the first Call for Participation will be on the site and available for download and use soon. We are so thankful to all who submitted their materials and shared them with those who use AHTR.

Race-ing Art History: A Case Study in applying ePortfolios to a First Year Seminar

July 8, 2014

I saw this seminar as an opportunity to combine two interests: encouraging meaningful student reflections and creating valuable assessment data, using eportfolios as both the ways and means.

#arthistory: Instagram and the Intro to Art History Course

June 25, 2014

In a period when educators are grappling with divergences between social media-driven forms of communication and academic communication, instagram, at least in the context of art history, has potential to both enrich content and strengthen the discipline’s relevance for contemporary learners.

Hemingway: A Simple Online Tool for Better Short-Form Writing (Museum 2.0)

June 22, 2014

Recently, I discovered an online tool that can change that. It’s called Hemingway. Its intent is “to make your writing bold and clear.”

From Paris to New York: Summarizing my first year behind the lectern

June 11, 2014

I have officially completed my first year of undergraduate teaching. My feelings, however, are mixed. Although I am relieved to have finished (and survived), I find myself grappling with more questions about how best to lead a survey course, engage with students, and be a better instructor now than I had in September.

Is There a Traditional Definition of Art History Anymore?

June 4, 2014

Having taught in museums for 15 years, I thought I was prepared to plan and teach an art history lesson. But I have emerged from the semester with a barrage of questions about exactly what constitutes art history, and how and why we look at art in the university classroom.

Summer Reading……

May 20, 2014

This week’s post is a short one providing a list of books and websites that focus on teaching techniques, writing ideas and websites with great art history content.

Curating the Classroom (or In Situ Teaching)

May 12, 2014

Here, I will address pedagogical concerns, but from the perspective of a museum curator. I think that that employing curatorial strategies in the classroom can bring students to a fuller understanding of the objects taught (often via digital reproductions) in an art history course.

Teaching Outside of Your Subject Area

May 7, 2014

Hanging Out with AHTR

April 28, 2014

The idea to initiate a series of AHTR Hangouts developed this year at THATCampCAA when a group of art historians gathered to discuss the use of digital technology in the classroom.

Introducing AHTR’s new Contributing Editors

These four educators will be leading specific content areas on the site and helping facilitate AHTR activities related to teaching art history.

Art History 2.0: Wölff brings us into the 21st century

April 20, 2014

As a tech-savvy business-school student at Wharton, I sought to bring Penn’s art history faculty up to speed with the latest in digital technology.

Taking Note of Art History

April 13, 2014

I ask my students to put down their pens and pencils, and look closely at the slides presented, and to arrive at their own conclusions.

Team-based Learning for Art Historians

April 7, 2014

Recently we participated in a workshop on Team-Based Learning (TBL) at Brooklyn College, a process where your students are divided into permanent teams for the entire semester.

“Teaching ain’t just lectures and exams.” On Letters of Recommendation…

March 31, 2014

The difference between my first letter-writing experience and now is that I am less likely to immediately respond “Sure, just send me your info!” and more likely to ask for additional information before agreeing or declining.

The Plagiarism Chronicles….

March 23, 2014

This post will discuss some of the reasons that students plagiarize, how we can prevent it in student essays, and the unique solution that I developed in reaction to plagiarism in my own classes.

Museum Object Portfolio Assignment

March 14, 2014

I wanted my students to consider the variety of ways that text can be used to introduce, augment, and/or constrain our response to the original object. Over the course of the first half of the semester each student had to compile a Museum Object Portfolio.

Making History: Wikipedia Editing as Pedagogical and Public Intervention

March 7, 2014

Gina Luria Walker, Project Continua’s Director, noted that by editing articles about historical women, participants were “making history by providing an alternative narrative of the past.”

AHTR reports back from THATCamp CAA

March 1, 2014

I realize that, like technology-enhanced learning, digital art history offers additional ways for scholars to conduct art historical research that might lead to new discoveries and understanding.

Rubrics: Why Use Them?

February 12, 2014

ŸIf you’re not convinced yet, here’s one of the biggest arguments in favor of using rubrics: they make grading unbelievably easier and less time-consuming.

Teaching for the first time? Read “Purposeful Pedagogy”

February 3, 2014

What follows will be especially helpful for anyone who is just getting started with their teaching practice.

Get involved with THATCamp CAA 2014!

January 27, 2014

THATCamp stands for “The Humanities and Technology Camp.” It is an unconference: an open, inexpensive meeting where humanists and technologists of all skill levels learn and build together in sessions proposed on the spot.

Bringing the museum into the art history classroom

January 20, 2014

..we came up with the idea to film some of the museums in the city in order to help facilitate professor-led discussions in our classrooms before our students hit the museum.

AHTR takes on 2014

January 12, 2014

We’re really excited to be able to support teachers develop and share teaching resources and get rewarded for the hard work and skill it takes to do so.

Call for Kress-funded AHTR Collaborators!

December 23, 2013

These lesson plans will be posted to the AHTR site in 2014, and are supported by small writing grants made possible by our Kress award.

Introducing library resources in the art history classroom

December 9, 2013

The more guidance students receive during the research process, whether from their professor or their librarian, the more confident they will feel while doing their research.

Wrapping up: asking students to reflect and evaluate

December 2, 2013

My personal experience with the portfolio and self-evaluation correspond with the benefits that Bean attributes to informal exploratory writing in Engaging Ideas,as helpful tools to develop my students’ critical thinking skills while also giving me another means to gauge students’ progress in the class.

Engaging the Masses: Activities for kicking off a jumbo class

November 26, 2013

I teach a survey art history course that is required of all undergraduate students, so I often have to overcome students’ skepticism about “yet another intro-level course.”  What follows are a few types of activities that I use as “hooks” to foster student engagement at the beginning of class.

Hangout with NAEA’s New Online Peer-to-Peer Initiative

November 21, 2013

Well, that’s exactly why we began a Peer-to-Peer Initiative for the National Art Education Association’s Museum Education Division — to use technology to connect with colleagues and share our ideas and programs in an informal way, outside of conferences.

Seeking the Best: Top Ten Qualities that Great Community Colleges Look for in New Hires

November 9, 2013

I have thought often about what makes a great community college professor, and I have tried to use what I have learned over my eight years of service in seeking out the best candidates to teach our students.

Interdisciplinarity in the Arts: Teaching others to teach with images

October 27, 2013

I offer the art history survey class, when appropriate, as an extended exercise in developing visual literacy skills that will be transferable assets when students reach the job market or undertake other academic pursuits.

Teaching at a Community College

October 18, 2013

I realized that so many people, even in education, hold fast to this idea. The purpose of this blog entry, therefore, is to help dispel that myth, and to give insight to those who might think twice about working at a community college.

The Thematic Survey: A Comparative Approach

October 15, 2013

By treating thematic groupings as feeding ground for comparative thinking, we can generate a space where students will look at cultural context to understand the formal differences, which also necessarily incorporates architecture.

Flipping the classroom, part 2

September 28, 2013

Last year I experimented with “flipping the classroom,” and it didn’t work — but I learned a valuable lesson in the process, proving that experimentation in the classroom can often lead to unexpected but useful results.

Curating a Virtual “Textbook” for Early 20th-Century Art History

September 21, 2013

Rather than asking my students to purchase a textbook, all of the resources we are using are available online, either free or through our campus library’s digital subscriptions.

Improv(e) Your Art History Class

September 13, 2013

Most of my professors tried to include the whole class, but eventually just actively engaged with the students who were interested in participating. Improv can change that.

Grading with Google Drive

September 6, 2013

First, in an age of cloud computing and ubiquitous data capture, I was frustrated regularly by the need to (gasp) plan ahead to have my grading with me in order to grade.

Thematic Approaches: Six Degrees of Separation in Art History

August 30, 2013

The theory that we are all connected by no more than six links applies quite well to art history because it can be used in terms of influences and ideas as well as formal design elements. There is room here for caveat, however. Drawing connections across time and cultures can be fraught with peril.

First Day Icebreakers

August 23, 2013

The first day of classes looms. For this short post, we’ve asked colleagues to share some of the icebreakers and activities they use on the first day of class – and we’d like to crowdsource more.

Building Language Skills Through Drawing

August 16, 2013

To reflect on and address some of the pedagogical issues I’ve come across during my teaching career, I ended up writing a book, Line Color Form: The Language of Art and Design, which was published this spring. In it, I’ve tried to address this problem through finding a common tongue based on specific aspects of visual language.

Timeline Assignment: Do you Tiki Toki?

August 9, 2013

In my seventeenth-century European art history course, I designed a collaborative web-based online timeline project to help students visualize spatial-temporal relationships among events, people, and the creation of objects.

Back Online!

In the meantime, inspired by a recent crowd-sourced post on the Chronicle of Higher Education, we’d also like to invite discussion of the first class of the semester.

Happy Holidays from AHTR!

July 5, 2013

Have a happy summer vacation, be in touch if you have questions, suggestions, or contributions for the site.

Crowdsourcing an Online Syllabus

June 21, 2013

I firmly believe this type of online syllabus resource is as legitimate for an upper level art history course… as it is for a required survey course. It allows flexibility so teachers can update and innovate more easily each semester when they spruce up their syllabi as it allows for much easier peer-to-peer sharing between instructors.

Beyond “Discussion Forums”—Changing the Game with VoiceThread “Conversation Starters” (it’s not just about the technology)

June 14, 2013

VoiceThread is so full of new teaching possibilities that, after discovering it in 2008, I turned my back on “discussion forums” and spent the next four years developing art history class projects.

Flipping the Class without Flipping Out

June 10, 2013

Isn’t listening and taking notes learning? Yes, but apparently not enough. We made a list that day of what would make learning easier and better and in current pedagogy speak, I “flipped” my classroom the next week and the week after.

Introducing Students to Professional Practices: Running a Mock Academic Conference

June 2, 2013

Modeling real-world experiences and practicing transferrable skills within classroom activities are what make art history relevant to the students in my courses, regardless of their majors.

Developing a Student Audioguide Assignment, Part 2

May 25, 2013

While evaluations show the audioguide project helps develop analytical, communication, collaborative, and technological skills, the greater impact has been to increase the student’s sense of empowerment.

Teaching for Independence: Empowering Learning in the Art Museum

May 10, 2013

One of my own goals when working with groups of college students and adults in the galleries (and in the classroom) is always to break down the often rigid expectations of “what we do” in front of a work of art.

Collaborations: Museums and Higher Education

May 3, 2013

The goal is to view the museum as an extension of Baruch’s classrooms bringing with it additional resources for exploring new and innovative ways to enrich classroom experience.

Exploring Multimodal Learning at the Rubin Museum of Art

April 29, 2013

As a museum educator, I help students and educators explore the ideas, cultures and philosophies of this art within a traditional Himalayan context and then apply these same concepts to contemporary life and ideas.

Working With Visual Thinking Strategies

April 19, 2013

Visual Thinking Strategies can be a perfectly acceptable methodology for building capacities for understanding culturally-specific art and galvanizing curiosity in museum visitors.

Online Teaching Part II: Ten Items to Help Guide a New Online Art History Course

April 6, 2013

Having just completed the design of my first online art history course for community college students, I read this op-ed and wondered what advice I would give to someone designing their first online course. Here are some of my ideas.

Developing a Student Audioguide Assignment

March 29, 2013

I developed this audioguide assignment, based on a traditional formal analysis paper. This post focuses on the design, objectives, and logistics of the audioguide assignment.

Notes on Online Teaching, Part I

March 22, 2013

I’m still not sure online learning will change the world, but it will continue to change me.

Bye, Bye Survey Textbook!

March 15, 2013

I’ve come to the conclusion that the “traditional” art history survey textbook doesn’t make the cut. Not the content per se, but the format.

Lesson Plans: I’ll show you mine if you show me yours

March 8, 2013

I started this post by telling you that I don’t have a lesson plan, but perhaps that isn’t really true. I have a very clear plan, but I don’t write it out.

Why Share?

March 1, 2013

Since the majority of the students at my institution are taught the survey art history by GTFs or adjuncts instead of full-time faculty, it would serve everyone well to encourage dialogue between the two groups of teachers.

Beta testing the AHTR site

February 11, 2013

The blog section on the AHTR site is a discussion forum for general questions, requests for material, or feedback.

Museum in the Classroom

February 27, 2012

Use our Museum Video section to prep your students for their museum response paper with videos that explore the spaces of New York City museums, large and small.