Art Historians at Work

Teaching with Inflammatory News Coverage

2009-11-18T09:36:00.004-05:00

Last month a clip was posted online of the conservative commentator Glenn Beck condemning Rockefeller Center. While it is nice to see part of the canon of American art history in the news, many academics lamented his factual errors and a-historical treatment of the visual program. This leaves a dilemma of how to respond intellectually to it. Should we ignore this type of coverage, thus leaving it uncorrected? Or should it be brought into the classroom so as to rigorously engage with it? I think it would take the better part of an hour to do it justice, but holding a classroom discussion about this material could be a lot of fun to teach.

One possibility would be to have the class read a scholarly essay about Rockefeller Center and also walk through a building on campus that is adorned with art as homework. I would use Posvar Hall at the University of Pittsburgh, built during the 1970s. Ask each student to bring in one page of typed notes, which focus on the content of the art in both places.

Say to the class that whatever the merits of Rockefeller Center's visual environment is, it was clearly meant to be meaningful to the people of New York during the 1930s. Also, whatever the merits of Posvar Hall is, it was clearly meant to be meaningful to the university community during the 1970s. Divide the class into groups. Have each group share a reason that the University of Pittsburgh is an important school, and a reason that New York is an important city. Try to keep the lists parallel in structure, even if that means adding things as the instructor that the students are unaware of. Ask students to compare the total message a viewer is left with from the art in Rockefeller Center with the total message a viewer is left with in Posvar Hall. Make sure that they address which environment is better at speaking to local people, creating an aesthetically pleasing environment, and providing an important message.

Then say that art objects have living histories, and that each generation redefines its relationship to them. The goal is to think, as a class, about whether Rockefeller Center and Posvar Hall continue to speak to the people of today. Say that you have one example of a person with a strong opinion of Rockefeller Center for them to use as a springboard in their discussion. Show the video while they are in groups, with the instruction to write down 5 things that are factually correct with the interpretation by Glenn Beck, 5 things that are factually wrong, and 5 agendas that Beck has. When the video is done have each group share items with the class that they have written down. Then have the class discuss which environment continues to speak better to the people of today—Rockefeller Center or Posvar Hall. Finally have the class vote on which environment they find most personally meaningful.

Grading with Voice Recognition Software

2009-10-13T10:55:00.004-04:00

Like most people, I've always done my grading by hand--students hand in a physical paper, I take a stack of them to a cafe or the library, and settle down with my pen. Again like most people, I try to provide useful comments that will help the students in the future.

This quarter I've been trying out the electronic dropbox, where students have to turn the work in online. My main reason for this was admittedly that I wanted to try out the anti-plagiarism software Turnitin, and that requires digital papers. (So far there has been no hint of plagiarism, I am glad to say.) My secondary reason was that I thought it would be worth trying typed comments. My handwriting is not terrible, but my hand does get tired and sometimes I do spill coffee on papers. I've been using Word's tracking and commenting functions. It seems to work reasonably well, except that I find I experience much more eyestrain.

James M. Lang's recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education provides an interesting look at a rather different approach to grading papers electronically--the use of voice recognition software. Lang's colleague, Geoffrey Vaughan, uses Dragon Naturally Speaking to compose responses to papers. Lang states:

"[F]or years now I have been typing up my remarks on students' work. I began doing that because my handwriting is so illegible, but quickly found it had two unforeseen benefits. First, because I can type faster than I can write, I can give more substantial comments on each paper without adding additional grading time. But second, and more important, instead of my students flipping right to the back page of their paper to see the grade and comments together, my students now almost always sit and read my typed comments first (they are stapled to the front of the paper) and only then flip to the end and check the grade. It may be a small change in how they process the graded work, but to me it sends the right message that the written feedback matters more than the grade."

Intrigued by Vaughan's twist on typed comments, Lang asked for a demonstration of how he dealt with student work using Dragon. Vaughan showed how he gave "a full page of text, single spaced, in numbered paragraphs. Each paragraph corresponded to a number he had placed in the margins of the student paper. A short paragraph at the end provides the standard final comment."

Vaughan says

"I used to put some scribbling in the margins of each paper, and I would draw lines from the margin to the bottom or write 'See over' and then write two or three sentences of a final comment at the end of the paper. Now I simply put a number in the margin, and I speak my response to each of those numbered points."

Lang observes, "His paragraphs are conversational, as you might expect, and not perfectly formulated. Vaughn explains to his students that he uses the software, and that they can always come to him to clarify confusing elements in his comments." He notes that

"As we talked, and I read through the samples he had, it became apparent to me that Vaughan's real commitment to this mode of responding to papers relates more to the conversational tone of his responses than to the time-saving element of it. As he explained it to me, the software has inspired him to think about responding to students' work as more of a dialogue than a summary judgment—a model he learned during the year he spent as a graduate student and tutor at the University of Oxford."

During Vaughan's days at Oxford, he'd been accustomed to having students come and read their papers aloud; the tutor would periodically stop them and discuss their ideas as they read. Use of voice recognition software reminded him of that process and makes him feel like he's having a conversation with the student. "It combines the usual American-style, paper-grading process with the model of the Oxford tutorial," he says.

Vaughan's comments reminded Lang of what he finds "the main challenge of evaluating student work"--the two separate functions of the grading process--"to explain to the students the reasons for the grade they received (i.e., you did these things well, and these things poorly) and to help them understand how to improve their performance." Lang observes,

"To turn our response to a student's work into a dialogue in which we are not simply passing judgment but engaging in a conversation about how the student can improve seems like a pedagogical change worth adopting, whether or not it saves time."

Voice recognition software is pretty easy to use these days. I have Dragon's next-to-latest version and use it to dictate long quotations when taking notes. The key to using voice recognition is simply to spend enough time at the beginning getting it used to your voice and the type of vocabulary you use. It's important to make corrections to its mistakes using the software, because that helps train it not to make the same mistakes again.

I don't know whether I'll take to doing my paper comments this way--I am not good at dictating my thoughts--but this might be a great method for others to try.

Van Gogh Correspondence Online

2009-10-12T17:47:00.003-04:00

Van Gogh is one of the artists best known to the average undergraduate, and thus a favorite choice for papers. There's now a great new resource available for everyone from freshman enthusiast to advanced specialist: a digital edition of all 902 extant letters from and to Vincent van Gogh is now online at http://www.vangoghletters.org. The site provides transcriptions of the original Dutch or French text, a translation into English, a full zoomable facsimile, and comprehensive annotation. There are also some 2000 illustrations of the works of art discussed in the letters.

This edition, based on fifteen years of research, was edited by Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten and Nienke Bakker of the Van Gogh Museum, in association with the Huygens Institute. (Editorial procedures are explained under 'About this edition'. A six-volume book edition is published in three languages (Dutch, French and English). More information about the books is available at http://www.vangoghletters.org/vg/bookedition.html.

Multiple Intelligences

2009-10-08T18:58:00.004-04:00

The other day I attended a workshop on Multiple Intelligences, or what one of the handouts called "Eight Ways of Being Smart." The basic idea here is that the types of intelligence measured on IQ tests are not the only kinds of intelligence, and that the wise instructor will try to get through to students through more than one of these.

I think many people these days are familiar with the idea that some people are strongly visual, others more auditory, and still others predominantly kinesthetic. The theory of Multiple Intelligences, propounded by Harvard scholar Howard Gardner, takes this further and proposes that people strong in...

=>Verbal-linguistic intelligence learn best through reading, hearing and seeing words, speaking, writing, discussing, and debating
=>Math-logical intelligence learn best through working with patterns and relationships, classifying, categorizing, and working with the abstract
=>Spatial intelligence learn best by working with pictures and colors, visualizing, using the mind's eye, and drawing
=>Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence learn best by touching, moving, processing knowledge through bodily sensations
=>Musical intelligence learn best via rhythm, melody, singing, listening to music and melodies
=>Interpersonal intelligence learn best by sharing, comparing, relating, interviewing, and cooperating
=>Intrapersonal intelligence learn best through working alone, doing self-paced projects, having a chance to reflect
=>Naturalist intelligence learn best by working in nature, exploring living things, and learning about plants and natural events.

Gardner hypothesizes these "intelligences" somewhat differently than what we might expect if this were just an expansion of the visual-auditory-kinesthetic modes of processing. Rather than having just one dominant mode, the average person would be likely to have strengths in several. One could be strongest, but not necessarily.

While there is research supporting Gardner's ideas, there is not a consensus on their validity. Gardner has been criticized for not really defining intelligence anew. Nonetheless, most educators would probably agree that the first seven at least represent familiar kinds of abilities and that each person has a specific configuration of strengths and weaknesses in these. We also recognize sub-areas: many people who speak well don't write well and vice versa, skill with color doesn't always accompany skill at recalling visual imagery, etc. Primary school teachers have long tried to work with their pupils to strengthen all of these areas. And there seems little reason to abandon strengthening all of these areas at the college level.

At the end of the workshop, my own main question was how we might practically incorporate this into teaching art history. We're in a discipline, after all, that is primarily visual (falls under so-called spatial intelligence) and verbal. There's a certain amount of the logic side of the math-logic area (patterns and relationships, classifying, categorizing, and abstract thinking all have their place in art history), and successful art historians are usually good at working alone on self-paced projects (intrapersonal). But I'm not worried about how those of us who are already art historians function, I'm thinking about all those students sitting there in dark rooms and auditoriums looking at slides. They look at the slides and listen to us talk, and that's about it. If they're already good at processing that kind of input, fine. But it's hard to drag in some of the other learning modes.

To some extent, some of us do have our students do some group work. This gives us a bit of a break from lecturing, and the more extroverted, team-oriented students tend to like it. We don't, however, find very many ways of including music or movement into our classes.

One of the most memorable experiences I had in an art history class was when I first began to attend art history classes, and sat in on the survey class. When we reached the Romanesque, the professor turned on a portable tape recorder and played Gregorian chant while giving us a nonverbal tour of slides of cathedral interiors. I've always thought this was a wonderful way to introduce Romanesque architecture. Almost any period of art after Romanesque could have a musical introduction, but it would take some knowledge and planning. As for movement, that's more of a challenge. Or am I wrong on that?

What are some of the ways YOU have used some of these modalities in teaching art history, especially at the beginning level? What do you think would work well to help students learn?

Academic Email Lists

2009-07-27T08:19:00.000-04:00

A recent article in the online Chronicle of Higher Education made me think about academic listservs and their uses. Some scholars believe they've ceased to be very useful, while others say they're indispensable.
The question here, however, is how to use these lists in our teaching. Most of our undergrad students probably don't need to be subscribing to academic lists such as H-ArtHist (especially since so much of the traffic is in German or announces conferences taking place in Europe in a couple of days' time). But the undergrads who are headed for grad school, and certainly students who are beginning graduate work, ought to be learning about these lists. H-ArtHist is a start, because it is purely art-historical, but it is extremely broad and will not immediately strike most students as useful--it is geared mainly to scholars who already have a PhD, and to some extent to the advanced grad student.
But since art history intersects with other history, our students should be encouraged to explore the other history and humanities lists that relate to their research interests. Many of these lists are lively, and have discussions of particular books or topics. H-Net is one of the best places to locate such lists, but many other lists also exist and are just a bit harder to find.

Comments, please?

The “Extra” Art History Textbook: A Writing Manual Roundup

2008-12-14T11:55:00.001-05:00

Art history textbooks are dry, encyclopedic, and non-controversial. They include every work of art except our favorites. We hear these complaints often, but nonetheless we use them. One way to spice up a course is to add extra readings. Some extras are practical references, such as writing manuals. Others cover theory or support specific assignments. This is the first in a series of posts on extra textbooks.

I know of two books specifically geared toward teaching writing in art history courses. They are Sylvan Barnet’s A Short Guide to Writing About Art and Henry Sayre’s Writing About Art. Their strength lies in addressing common problems that students face in the art history classroom. I have found them to be useful guides for viewing assignments and research papers in introductory classes—which is their goal. For classes built around more complex writing, however, the books below are more appropriate.

Pedagogical research has shown that it is useful to break writing assignments into steps. Requiring multiple drafts of an assignment or smaller preparatory assignments that emphasize specific viewing, analytical, or research skills makes the process we expect more transparent and manageable for our students. One of the strengths of this approach to teaching writing is that it allows the instructor to discuss specific writing skills and strategies over the course of a semester. To do this I find that books which encourage students to think critically about their writing process to be most appropriate. Jeff Bollow’s Writing FAST: How to Write Anything with Lightning Speed and John Trimble’s Writing with Style are my favorites.

Students enjoy Writing FAST because it is written breezily and is filled with practical advice. Bollow is a screenwriter, but his method is intended to be useful for everyone. His argument is that beginning writers are often frustrated and waste time because they do not know the steps required or take them out of order. “FAST” is an acronym for these steps (Focusing ideas, Applying ideas to a structured writing format, Strengthening the writing through multiple drafts, and Tweaking the final version for good style). He includes sub-steps for clarity and summaries of each chapter. I have had success assigning the book in small chunks over an entire semester. When possible I discuss the ideas in class, but sometimes time runs short. In that case the students respond to the reading using an on-line discussion board that I require them to participate in.

Writing with Style is another superb guide. It acknowledges that the “rules” and “superstitions” about writing that students pick up in high school have some merit. The major strength of the book, however, is teaching when to break the rules. Compelling ideas should be conveyed with compelling language. And that often means experimenting with strategies that students fear—like dashes and ultra-short sentences. Examples of excellent writing are included throughout the text, and it is written in a conversational style. Trimble also discusses the mistakes that intermediate writers make in a straightforward way. The book ends with a chapter of quotations by famous authors about writing, discussing how they struggle with the process but ultimately find it rewarding.

I have not used them as textbooks, but a couple of other resources are worth noting for special situations. For students struggling with basic grammar and punctuation, William Strunk and E.B. White’s The Elements of Style remains the standard. Its strength is thoroughness, but the text is dry. For students struggling to finish well-structured essays during exams I recommend Sanford Kaye’s Writing under Pressure: The Quick Writing Process. It discusses the writing and grading of essay exams from both a student’s and an instructor’s viewpoint, which is insightful to both.

References

Barnet, Sylvan. A Short Guide to Writing About Art. 9th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2008.

Bollow, Jeff. Writing FAST: How to Write Anything with Lightning Speed. St. Pauls: Embryo Films 2004.

Kaye, Sanford. Writing under Pressure: The Quick Writing Process. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Sayre, Henry M. Writing About Art. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009.

Strunk, William, and E. B. White. The Elements of Style. 50th Anniversary ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2009.

Trimble, John R. Writing with Style: Conversations on the Art of Writing. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000.

Please respond in the comments with your own thoughts on teaching writing.

Grading Essay Exams

2008-10-18T13:06:00.003-04:00

Let's talk. How do people grade essay exams that include points for image IDs?

Some people place considerable weight on correct ID; the more recent trend seems to be away from ID and giving full weight to the essays. I fall in between, feeling that it is important for students to have some grasp of the ID and to be able to demonstrate that. This, however, can creating grading problems.

I've just finished grading 40 midterms. My overall reaction to these exams was quite positive: nearly every student wrote pretty good essays that showed they had listened in class, read the readings, and thought about the concepts. Of course, some students have a more advanced understanding of concepts than others, some have a better eye for detail, some write faster, and some even write in well-turned phrases. But the vast majority showed they understood the material pretty well, and even those who didn't weren't producing failing essays.

But perhaps I made a mistake in saying that the ID portion was less important to me than the essays. People freely left out dates (within 10 years generally gets full credit on this exam) and medium ("statue" is not a medium, thank you--"stone" is acceptable and I prefer "basalt" or "marble"). Most people did well on titles, and not so dreadfully on artists. But still. A significant number of people, including some of the best essayists, missed enough on ID (1/2 point each for title, artist, date, and medium) that there is no way that I can apply the usual 90% and over = varieties of A formula. This means that in order to be fair to the quality of the essays, I have to figure out some kind of grading curve.

I am not numerically inclined. The real evaluation of these exams lies in the extensive comments, which I think will help this (clearly motivated) class improve no matter what their current status. But I do have to give them grades that make sense and that indicate which parts of the exam were better done than others--hence the point system.

I'm curious how others are grading this type of ID plus essay exam, which is, after all, a very standard format in art history.

Art History Wikis and Other Dabbling in Web 2.0

2008-09-30T23:05:00.007-04:00

Art Historians are only now beginning to experiment with the potential for Web 2.0 to change our teaching, as indicated by a glut of technology-related topics to be presented at the 2009 meetings of the College Art Association.

I have long been interested in how the Internet shapes knowledge. And one of the topics that I am interested in is the Wikipedia and various other projects by the Wikimedia Foundation. Most of my own contributions have amounted to tinkering rather than full-blown composition, but I can happily say that I improved entries on a handful of art-related topics. (See, for example, the wikipedia entry for the Discipline of Art History as well as entries on Oscar Howe, John Steuart Curry, Currier and Ives, Robert Stacy-Judd, Andre Breton, Giorgio Vasari, Duncan Grant, and Jean-Frederic Waldeck .)

Although I have mixed feelings about the reliability of wikis for classroom use, I nonetheless recognize that the entries can be valuable--particularly at early stages of research--and that students will use them even if they are forbidden. My solution to encourage my students to be rigorous with information has been to require them to find a large number of sources (perhaps 20) with half of them coming from the Internet and half being peer-reviewed and paper-based. They then compare their content in an annotated bibliography as a step toward writing their final papers.

A lesser-known project of Wikimedia is Wikibooks--aiming to create wiki-based textbooks for the major disciplines. There is an Art History Textbook in progress, but it has stagnated for several years. I am curious whether the book will be rejuvenated by the discussions scheduled to take place at the CAA, as well as whether the project should be rejuvenated. While textbooks are indeed overpriced and often mediocre, can a wiki do better? How can we ensure what a student sees in preparation for an exam if we use a wiki textbook? Because of such questions my instinct is that I would not teach from a wiki, but I nonetheless see the potential for internet-based resources. One interesting Internet-based resource designed to be used as a multimedia textbook supplement comes from the art history faculty at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Called smARThistory, it is filled with video and audio on topics from ancient antiquity to the present. I suspect that many instructors will eventually opt-out of textbooks in favor of content that they develop themselves to post on course-management servers (for example Blackboard and Moodle), items from sites such as smARThistory, and resources they glean from institutional repositories.

Teaching the Loss of Iraq’s Heritage

2008-09-30T21:53:00.009-04:00

Last week I had the privilege of spending a few days with Dr. Donny George, who is the former director of the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad—an institution which holds some of the most celebrated antiquities of the Near East. Dr. George fled the country in June 2006 because he had received death threats and is now a professor in the Anthropology department at SUNY Stony Brook. The museum he directed was of course looted from April 10th to 16th 2003 following the U.S.-led invasion when it was left unguarded and unprotected. As art historians, many of us feel an obligation to include these events in our survey courses and to discuss the loss with our students. But for those of us who are not Near Eastern specialists it can be difficult to devise a curriculum. And from my experience wading through news reports and websites I can attest that there is much misinformation published, and it is a struggle to determine what actually happened.

In preparation for meeting Dr. George I read several books on both the history of Near Eastern art as well as the looting of the museum, and the most insightful materials that I found were in an exhibition catalog titled Catastrophe! The Looting and Destruction of Iraq’s Past published by the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. It includes the details of the tragedy, high quality color illustrations, and essays by scholars that have been involved in the recovery. The essays are particularly valuable because they are short and written for a general audience—the perfect type of material to use as supplementary reading in a class. A friend of mine assigned one of them and the students enjoyed discussing it very much.

The catalog describes how, due to the foresight of the museum staff, many of the most valuable and important objects had been removed from display cases before the invasion. Some were put in off-site storage in the Central Bank. Objects too large to move were surrounded by padding and sand bags to minimize damage in the case of bombing. Nevertheless, when thieves entered the museum they were able to locate and abscond with approximately 15,000 objects, including “textbook” pieces of fine art, such as the Warka Vase and Mask. Files were overturned and mixed, thus erasing institutional memory.

The looting was widely-condemned in the international press, and the American occupying government was rightly criticized for not devising and implementing a plan to protect these objects of world-heritage. Of particular negligence is the fact that the museum remained unprotected for three days after the museum staff requested assistance in securing the museum and two days after U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell publicly stated that the museum would be secured. Since that time nearly half of the looted objects have been recovered, but the museum remains closed to the public. Although the galleries were being prepared for reopening, due to political instability they have been permanently walled off with masonry to deter theft if the museum must be left unguarded again.

Besides the losses from the museum, looting continues on a large-scale at archaeological sites—particularly in southern Iraq. Unprovenanced objects taken from these areas are often of great beauty and garner high prices on the black market for antiquities. But without the information about where they came from they are of little use for furthering knowledge.

Discussion Boards in Blackboard

2008-09-25T12:19:00.003-04:00

Over the summer, I attended a Blackboard workshop ("Courseweb" as it's called at University of Pittsburgh, but the software is the same) in the hopes of upgrading my skills and seeing what was new.

Many of the Blackboard features seem geared more to large lecture classes or to classes that employ considerable quantitative testing, but I was intrigued by the Discussion Board feature and decided to try it out. In the past, I had taught Intro to Modern using the Arnason survey as my textbook, supplemented by two additional readings per week, one read by one half of the class and one read by the other. Each group had to present their reading to the other half of the class.

While on the whole that had worked well (although one half of the alphabet proved to be much more prepared to discuss than the other, which is something that just can't be predicted), it did take up class time to have the two groups discuss how they were going to present the readings. This seemed like something that the Discussion Board feature could really assist with.

Both of the courses I teach this semester are done with this same two-group method. Intro to Modern is an evening class and as it needs a short break, I let the groups supplement their online discussion with face-to-face prep during the break. American Art is twice per week and thus all of their discussion is online prior to presenting. Usually one group presents on Tuesday and the other on Thursday, although there will be a few days when both present on the same day (today will be the first of those).

Both classes are making good use of the Discussion Board feature. They recognize that this is part of their participation grade and for the most part are diligent about posting analyses and comments about the readings. Even though we are not yet halfway into the semester, I'm already seeing improvement in the quality of the overall discussion and increasing attention to how their own posts relate to what has already been said. To some extent they critique the readings, which gives me some sense which readings work well or even which ones are dry and somewhat unpopular but produced good discussion. The students are beginning to really relate these readings to themes in the course (particularly in the American Art class) and to bring in thoughts from other work they have done (for example in religious studies, environmental studies, and ethnic studies) and to think about how present-day works such as Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans memorial compares to early 19th-century memorial art.

Both classes, but especially the Intro to Modern class, are getting to know their classmates quickly and work well with them, and are becoming increasingly comfortable about speaking up during the presentations, although naturally some students are more comfortable presenting than others. Since the shyer students know that their Discussion Board contributions are read, they know that while I do expect them to help present, it is not as problematic to give a nervous presentation as it would be if that were all they were assessed by. Their online comments are there for me and the rest of the group to read, and in class the group can chime in with additional comments to round out the presentation.

I will definitely be using the Discussion Board feature in the future and recommend it highly. It does take a little extra work on my part, but really not much, and it will help me grade my students much more fairly in the end.

Scanning with Acrobat 8

2008-08-24T18:20:00.002-04:00

For the past year or so, I've been using ABBYY Finereader to scan documents, rather than Acrobat, in part because I was often scanning multilingual texts (something Finereader does quite well at), and in part because the version of Acrobat I had been using (6, I believe) kept wanting to reset the scanner software to black-and-white and was generally annoying.

I thought, however, that I'd see what Acrobat 8 did, and I was pleasantly surprised. Acrobat 8 no longer wants to reset the scanner software to a useless black-and-white, but offers its own controls, which include specifics on OCR and target language, and gives the option of viewing the scanner software settings as well, which I recommend doing.

Acrobat 8 was amazingly easy to set up to scan English-language chapters and articles. I was able to switch from grayscale to color for pages with color illustrations, and the program runs the OCR automatically once you tell it you're done scanning. My test searches seemed to be quite accurate.

Acrobat 8 offers more languages than the version I had used before (it now includes Czech!), so for monolingual documents it seems to be very fast and easy. For documents with text in multiple languages (I am thinking more of names with umlauts, cedillas, and so forth), I suspect it would be best to use ABBYY or Omnipage on a multi-language setting in order to make sure these are properly searchable.

At a less high-quality level, there remains the option of taking existing photocopies and running them through a Digital Sender, then separately using an OCR program on them to make them searchable. I still say the Digital Sender is an amazing machine; over the summer I used ours on hundreds more pages of old articles.

Photos of Medieval Georgian Churches

2008-07-08T09:49:00.004-04:00

The Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz gives us the opportunity to broaden our medieval architectural offerings with an online exhibition of photos of medieval Georgian churches (that's the Georgia on the Black Sea, not the American one, of course). A joint research project commissioned a photographic survey in 2006, which was "completed under the most challenging conditions and in regions that were to a certain extent impenetrable." The result is "a globally unique documentation of the medieval monuments of Georgia" with more than one thousand photographs, which can be seen either in the online exhibition or by searching the digital photo library. The latter link gives details on copyright for the database images, which extend far beyond the Georgian collection.

Images from Wikipedia

2008-06-09T09:31:00.004-04:00

Professors have mixed feelings about Wikipedia. It's a wonderful resource, but the changeable and potentially incorrect nature of the information makes it a source we hesitate to let students cite.

Without getting into this debate just now, I'd like to point out that Wikipedia offers a surprisingly good selection of useful images, which are by definition freely available for download.

While Wikipedia is unlikely to replace other resources for images of paintings, it can be great for photos of sculpture and buildings. This morning, for example, I was able to get several hi-res photos of works by Czech cubist sculptor Otto Gutfreund, and also to get hi-res photos of buildings designed by the Czech modernist architect Josef Gočár. These are original photos taken onsite by Wikipedia contributors, not scans from books. They come with photo date and various other information about the shot, so that in your PowerPoint presentation you can contrast your scan of a 1920s photo of Gočár's Legiobanka with the Wikipedia photo Petr Vilgus took in 2006.

Wikipedia is, of course, always looking for contributions. Consider photographing significant buildings or monuments in your town and uploading them to the page for that architect. You can find out about Wikipedia's photo policies here, useful whether you are uploading or just downloading.

The Early Americas at Library of Congress

2008-05-21T16:37:00.005-04:00

Useful for those doing courses in American or Precolumbian art, the Library of Congress's Exploring the Early Americas

"features selections from the more than 3,000 rare maps, documents, paintings, prints, and artifacts that make up the Jay I. Kislak Collection at the Library of Congress. It provides insight into indigenous cultures, the drama of the encounters between Native Americans and European explorers and settlers, and the pivotal changes caused by the meeting of the American and European worlds. The exhibition includes two extraordinary maps by Martin Waldseemüller created in 1507 and 1516, which depict a world enlarged by the presence of the Western Hemisphere."

If you follow the links to the Exhibition Themes, there are images of numerous objects with copious information. There are also interactive presentations.

It's not clear from the website how long this exhibition will be up at the Library, but the online content should be up indefinitely.

Views of Florence Online Exhibition

2008-05-01T16:37:00.004-04:00

Just in time for those summerschool courses in Italian Art and Architecture (at least those starting in early summer) comes an online exhibition by the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz. Views of Florence from the print collection of the Photothek runs April 28, 2008 to July 6, 2008. The Institut describes it as follows:

The online exhibition focuses on “Florentine Views”, which represent the largest group by far within this heterogeneous collection. The exhibition is structured by subject. It begins with a range of views which clearly illustrate the changes as well as the constants in the visual appearance of the city between the 15th century and the 19th century. The exhibition includes a copy from 1758 after the famous Florentine chain map (created around 1485, now in the Museum of Prints and Drawings (Kupferstichkabinett) in Berlin), which was adapted in many later views of the city.
The city maps allow a differentiated view over the city and its monuments, documenting the urban growth of Florence over more than 300 years. Stefano Bonsignori’s map from 1584 uses an axonometric perspective to provide both accurate views of the buildings and the exact route of the roads.
Particularly numerous are the 19th century maps, which illustrate the urban development of the city.
The following sections of the exhibition deal with architectural ensembles such as the cathedral complex, the squares, the palaces, the bridges and the gardens. Several plates document the condition of Florence Cathedral before completion of the neogothic front in 1887. Our prints also include a bequeathed view of the rchitecture of the San Pier Maggiore church, which was demolished in 1783. This demonstrates the special source value of the collection.
The last section of the online exhibition is dedicated to “historical events” and provides a brief excursus on the use of print media in the context of the Italian unification movement of the 19th century.
With the digitalisation of its print inventory, the photo library of the Kunsthistorisches Institute has not only made this resource accessible to online users but at the same time also taken a first step towards the academic study of this important partial collection.
The next online exhibition by the photo library opens on July 7, 2008 and is devoted to the mediaeval art of Georgia.

Enjoy!

Software for Sketching

2007-12-28T11:29:00.000-05:00

Few art history students use tablet pcs. As far as I can tell, the tablet or convertible is still more the province of engineering students.
I suspect this will eventually change, however, as more and more students find out the advantages of taking notes directly onto the computer. One outcome I can imagine is that some students will want to sketch details of the art. For that, Student Tablet PC provides a nice roundup of several programs designed for sketching.

To Pre-Post or Not to Pre-Post?

2007-12-05T10:35:00.000-05:00

All right, fall semester is ending and we've been very much distracted, but here we are again. The question has arisen: when one has the PowerPoint presentation for class prepared significantly in advance, is it wise to post it online? (This is in relation to presentations that definitely will be online after class.)
One of my students suggested that it would be good to have the images ahead of time, and I didn't have any objection in principle. A colleague, however, states that this leads to students simply printing out the presentation and feeling that there's no need to take notes on the lecture.
I said, what, when the only data on the presentation is the image, the artist, the title, and the year?
She said yes, even so.
Let's have some discussion on this!

For Students: Organizing Notes on Computer

2007-06-30T18:33:00.000-04:00

Robert at Student Tablet PC provides a nice summary of how he sets up an electronic filing system to deal with his course notes. Robert points out that while his example uses the GoBinder software program, the same effect can be achieved with other programs, as Damon shows in a detailed comment to Robert's post. Both file via the course (Robert by its number, Damon by its name) and have sub-areas (Robert divides by lecture date and also by other types of material such as Essays). Damon uses a combination of Outlook and OneNote to handle his notes.
While both Robert and Damon use tablet PCs to write and file their notes, their general strategies can be adapted by students who use regular laptops or even desktop machines. In these cases, the student might either scan the lecture notes or just keep them as paper, but the filing strategy could be used for keeping track of other materials related to the course, such as the images being studied.
Robert will be doing a follow-up that deals specifically with note-taking.

Summertime

2007-06-27T22:52:00.000-04:00

Since it's summer in the Northern Hemisphere, we're either not thinking much about teaching or teaching summer school and therefore overcome by all the prep and grading.

There'll be more soon enough.

Remembering Dates

2007-05-31T15:58:00.000-04:00

One of the most painful study problems for many art history students (especially, but by no means only, non-majors) is the recall of what can be hundreds of works per course.

We'll be returning to this issue in later posts, but for now, a couple of tips on recalling dates.

My own method, which was a pain in itself but was reasonably effective, involved creating a spreadsheet of all the works covered. With it sorted by artist and date, I could see where things tended to fall in the larger chronology.

A more interesting method, which uses a more visual mnemonic technique, comes from medievalist Robert Burdock's Paperless Undergrad blog. Robert reasons that one generally studies a work with an image of it at hand, and that one thus ought to have the date equally handy for study.

If the student is studying from a textbook, the date is indeed usually close at hand... but not usually very noticeable. Captions tend to be unobtrusive.

Robert, who puts digital copies of his artworks on his tablet PC (tablet PCs, for those not yet familiar with them, are akin to laptops but take pen input instead of or addition to typing, and are increasingly popular among students). Robert's mnemonic strategy is to look for some feature within the work itself--a squiggle that looks like a 3, for instance--that will remind him of the work's date. He can then mark it digitally to help himself remember while studying.

As Robert notes, the technique doesn't work for absolutely every work of art, but it does help him remember quite a few works in a much more active, creative manner.
Robert explains his method in detail, with examples, so I won't duplicate his efforts. Robert's method could probably be adopted for very successful use with an electronic flashcard program.

Words Students (and Others) Often Confuse

2007-05-18T04:25:00.000-04:00

Some words are tricky. For example, students new to art history have to learn that formal analysis means an analysis of form, and has nothing to do with formal dress. But that's an easy one. Once learned, it's seldom forgotten. More troublesome are pairs that are easily confused and that frequently appear incorrectly in print or on the internet, reinforcing people's mistakes.

Tenants and Tenets: A tenant is someone living in a space, a tenet is a foundational idea.

Simple and Simplistic: Simple is... well, simple. Easy. Uncomplicated. Plain. Simplistic refers to a notion someone has simplified to the point of being rather stupid. Simplistic explanations are not good, simple ones may be.

Compliment and Complement: A compliment is when someone tells you you're smart or they like your sense of style. A complement is an addition, generally of a positive sort. For instance, your new shoes may complement (add to and go with) your wardrobe, but as they are not animate, they do not compliment it.

Phase and faze: A phase is time related; we can refer to a phase in someone's life or career. When you are fazed, you are generally disturbed by something (one more often says that a person was unfazed, meaning the disturbing event or situation didn't seem to bother the person unduly).

Affect and Effect: To affect something is to have an effect on it. (Yes, really!) Affect is also a psychological term referring to how someone presents him/herself ("depressed affect"), but this sense is unlikely to be used in art history. One can affect change (pretend change or have an effect upon it) but more often one will effect change (make it happen). The two words are devilishly similar in some of their meanings, and more troublesome in that Effect is often carelessly pronounced just like Affect (as if both were spelled Uffect). Also, the psychological term Affect stresses the first syllable, whereas otherwise the stress is generally on the second.

Handy guides include
Carnegie Mellon's Tricky Words
Alan Cooper's Homonym List

Please add more of these in the comments section!

Rooting Out Plagiarism

2007-05-16T04:07:00.000-04:00

This morning Google brought up a list of "Sponsored Links" that reminded me of one of those perennial teaching problems: how to keep students from plagiarizing.

It's disheartening to see Google accepting sponsorship from links that offer the likes of

"Essays written for you,"

"Custom College Essays
Low Prices. 100% Satisfaction.
No plagiarism. 100% Original."

"100% original essays. No Plagiarism
Only 9.95 p/pg and Free delivery."

"High Quality Essays w/out the Work.
Free Samples - Find Your Essay!"

It's also a bit mindboggling to see these outfits claiming "no plagiarism," as while their staff may not have plagiarized in creating the essays, this doesn't alter the fact that the purchaser is turning in someone else's work as his or her own. This is what we don't allow, never mind whether the original author consented to the deception by putting the piece up for sale.

The tricky part for us, however, to construct written assignments that are relatively plagiarism-proof. I'm not sure it's possible to design an utterly plagiarism-proof writing assignment done outside of class (I know a musicologist who assigns concert reports, and still has problems with students who plagiarize from album liner notes and such), but we can make it more likely that most of the work will be original.

For starters, have the students write something in class the first or second day. In my Writing Practicum (a one-credit course whose students are simultaneously enrolled in a specific lower-division art history survey, such as Intro, Intro to Modern, or Intro to Asian), I have the students do a description and formal analysis of a work I choose. While few of the students have ever done such a thing before, and it is an ungraded exercise, it provides me with an idea of each person's initial writing style and level of experience in writing about art. This is both a yardstick for observing improvement, and a way of catching unnatural leaps in sophistication. Other types of in-class writing (including essay quizzes and exams) can also be used as controls.

Try to come up with topics or approaches that are unlikely to have been done by others. This isn't as hard as it sounds. For instance, in the Writing Practicum I give an assignment in comparison. One of the works to be compared is the same for everyone in the class. This one is generally a canonical work. The comparison work can be chosen from a list of about ten, some of which are much less famous. While more than one student may choose the same pair, I give new choices every time I teach the class, so students cannot get a prewritten comparison from someone who took the class before. It is also relatively unlikely that these comparisons will be available elsewhere, although one cannot rule out the possibility of individual phrases being lifted.

Having students write about works seen at a local museum or gallery is also relatively safe. The older or more famous the work, the greater the chance of plagiarism, but even so, unless the work is particularly famous, finding a source to plagiarize may be more trouble than writing something original. Pedagogically, too, there is considerable value in having students write about works they can see in person. Even apart from the Benjaminian "aura" of the original work, matters of scale and texture come into play when the student can see the original.

At a more advanced level of instruction, many professors require students to turn in a series of related assignments, such as a proposal, a preliminary bibliography, and finally a research paper. This type of compartmentalization has both pedagogical and anti-plagiarism benefits. The student learns to write proposals (depending on how detailed the proposal has to be, of course), and there is less chance of a wholly plagiarized paper. When time can be set aside for students to talk about the progress of their papers, and discuss both problems encountered and exciting discoveries, this can be very helpful to students who are stuck--and also discourages plagiarism.

Journal on Austria-Related Teaching

2007-05-05T12:47:00.000-04:00

Austrian art may not leap to most people's minds when planning a syllabus. After a moment's thought, however, names begin to come to mind--Klimt, Schiele, and Kokoschka, for example. When we think beyond the borders of present-day Austria and contemplate the Austro-Hungarian empire and its successor states, the possibilities become quite intriguing. The region is still not much studied by American art historians, but a growing number of us are working on topics relating to this area.

How to find resources if you're not a Central European specialist?

Teaching Austria is a peer-reviewed e-journal published by the Modern Austrian Literature and Culture Association. It is devoted to the teaching of Austrian, Austro-Hungarian, Central European, and Habsburg culture, history, and society, and appears annually to present contributions on teaching at all levels and from all disciplines. Vol. 2 has just come online, with nine articles available to download free.

If you already teach Austria in any of its incarnations, consider contributing to the 2007 Volume (#3) of Teaching Austria. Teaching Austria solicits

"essays in English or German that outline ideas for and best practices in teaching at all levels of the curriculum, including, but not limited to, language instruction, undergraduate major and minor courses, graduate courses, Austrian studies courses given in English, course and curriculum design, study abroad programs, and materials design. Essays and notes from any discipline are welcome, as are contributions that deal with Austria in comparative contexts."

… Suggested length: between 2 and 15 double-spaced pages for the essay text (back matter excepted); other options may be considered in consultation.
… Author Guidelines.
… Suggested Due Date: 1 July 2007, for a publication by the end of 2007 or early 2008; dates are somewhat negotiable; publication will be rolling, as soon as revisions are made.

All contributions should be submitted to the editor electronically (MS-Word or RTF format):
EMAIL SUBMISSION: to Katherine Arens
OR SEND A CD TO:
Katherine Arens
Department of Germanic Studies
E. P. Schoch 3.102
1 University Station C3300
U of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712-0304

And don't forget about Historians of German & Central European Art & Architecture, an affiliated society of the College Art Association.

Digitization Gear

2007-04-29T05:32:00.000-04:00

Increasingly, we need to get images and texts into digital form. Here are some methods of doing this. As far as I know, everything out there is either based on use of some form of scanner or digital camera, each of which has its merits.

All or most of us have used some sort of scanner. The results are usually good, but the process is slow and it can be really hard to position a heavy art book on the scanner while simultaneously using the scanner software. Some special-purpose scanners include:

The Plustek OpticBook is designed specifically for scanning books. How? The scanning surface goes all the way to the edge of the scanner and it's designed to scan the book page without getting a dark or fuzzy edge near the gutter. This scanner is extremely popular with students who use tablet computers, as they can easily (although not all that quickly) scan their textbooks and no longer have to carry them. It's a relatively inexpensive scanner and hasn't gotten stellar reviews for image quality, but it appears to be good enough for most purposes. It is probably not large enough to handle the really big art books.

The Digital Sender is a spiffy machine that will rapidly take your photocopies and make PDF files from them. I believe this is what the University of Pittsburgh library uses to create its electronic reserve readings. The quality depends on the original photocopy, of course, but I've been very much impressed with the results after using it to digitize hundreds of pages of photocopied articles. I recommend using Acrobat's Capture feature on the resulting PDFs so that the text will be searchable and highlightable. Anyone teaching a course at Pitt is eligible to use the Digital Sender at CIDDE. My guess is that other schools also have these magic scanners.

Camera-based tools include:

ATIZ offers BookDrive DIY, a setup that cradles the book and uses two digital cameras to produce the images. Their website describes it as "fast, affordable and upgradable." It looks as though this is a variant on the old-style camera stand, but designed specifically for getting good results from books. Both cameras go simultaneously, and you see your results on the computer screen. It comes in two sizes and I think you supply your own cameras and computer. At 35kg/77lbs this is not a very portable solution, but could be a good departmental purchase.

Snapter, a new software from ATIZ, is designed to turn photos from your digital camera into usable documents. Among other things, it claims to flatten curled pages, improve lighting, and save in various formats. If Snapter does all it claims, it will be a boon to those of us who photograph books or bound periodicals at libraries and archives. For example, I've photographed historic bound periodicals, some of them with rather tight bindings, and plan to use some of them for class exercises in visual literacy. (Students examine two or three periodicals in a language none of them is likely to know, and analyze the editorial direction and readership from the design.) An early review indicates it has trouble working with musical scores, so it may not be ideal for pages that are mostly art, but test results on text seem to be satisfactory. Snapter offers a 14-day free trial and is $49 otherwise.

Note: I subsequently tested Snapter version 1.03.04 on book photos, results of which can be seen elsewhere. Art reproductions did not pose a problem, but other things did.

Another note: It looks as though ABBYY FineReader Professional may be the way to handle documents photographed with a digital camera. This OCR program, which is multilingual, can now create searchable PDF files from digital photos. Perhaps less useful for teaching than for research, but I can't wait to try this!

Image Resources Online at Library of Congress

2007-04-27T10:37:00.000-04:00

The Library of Congress has loads of amazing images online, and is adding more regularly (see Exhibitions page). Here are just a few of the many to consider when putting together courses.

The Empire That Was Russia: The Prokudin-Gorskii Photographic Record Recreated is an amazing collection of early twentieth-century color photographs from Czarist Russia. Prokudin-Gorskii traveled all over the empire photographing its inhabitants using a system of three cameras with separate filters. This would be great for use in history of photography courses and for Russian art.

Online exhibition on Leonardo's Study for Adoration of the Magi.

Arthur Szyk: Artist for Freedom. Work by a Jewish antifascist cartoonist and miniaturist, mostly around the time of World War II.

The Floating World of Ukiyo-E: Shadows, Dreams, and Substance. "This exhibition showcases the Library's spectacular holdings of Japanese prints, books, and drawings from the 17th to the 19th centuries. These works are complemented by related works from the Library's collections created by Japanese and Westerns artists into the 20th century."

Frank Lloyd Wright: Designs for an American Landscape, 1922-1932.

A Heavenly Craft: The Woodcut in Early Printed Books.

The Work of Charles and Ray Eames: A Legacy of Invention. Showcases the designs of this legendary team. Lots of images.

Life of the People: Realist Prints and Drawings from the Ben and Beatrice Goldstein Collection, 1912-1948. Includes works by Sloan, Benton, and other American artists of the first half of the twentieth century. This would make a good supplement to Frances Pohl's Framing America text.

The Library of Congress has many more exhibitions, plus images such as early photographs and daguerreotypes, early sheet music covers, and so forth.

Why We're Here

2007-04-26T17:19:00.000-04:00

Why a blog about teaching art history? And who writes this blog?

Art history like many other academic disciplines, has its own unique requirements, many of which center around the fact that our students need to be able to see reproductions of and/or original works of art, which tends to mean spending a lot of time in a darkened classroom. Historically, this has meant an emphasis on lecture courses, with seminars only for more advanced students. While lectures in darkened rooms are unlikely to disappear anytime soon, with increased use of technology in the classroom (PowerPoint, ArtStor, and Courseweb, to name a few examples), changes in pedagogy are underway.

At University of Pittsburgh, a good percentage of the grad students in History of Art and Architecture are preparing for teaching careers. Everyone in the program can expect to spend some time as a teaching assistant, and will probably also teach at least one stand-alone course. Consequently, we'd all like to improve our skills! We have an interest in finding out about and sharing best practices or innovative ideas, whether technological or not. Sometimes the best way to do something will be an old and familiar way, and sometimes it will be new and surprising. Our hope is to create a forum where we can share tips, resources, and lots of good ideas in an easy to access format.

For example, at University of Pittsburgh, we have CIDDE (the Center for Instructional Development & Distance Education) and a new, department-specific pedagogy course, but many of us haven't taken the course, and some aren't in residence so can't attend events at CIDDE. This is probably a very typical situation--certain resources are in place but not always accessible. A blog, we hope, will help put a variety of resources at our fingertips and provide a friendly forum for discussion as well.

How will it work? We'll post irregularly, as ideas occur to us. We'll have a variety of topics, applicable to different aspects of the field. The blog will be searchable by category (for example, ArtStor, Courseweb/Blackboard, Lecturing, Tests, General Tips) and will include links to other useful sites. Using categories allows easy access to a wide variety of topics, some of which may prove to be a bit more tangential (job interview tips, for example). Readers can comment on the posts, which will provide additional ideas and information.

We hope this blog will prove useful and enjoyable both for the grad students at University of Pittsburgh and for anyone else interested in improving their ability to teach art history and/or visual culture.