What is the best part about teaching the Core Curriculum?
What I find intoxicating is dealing with students who don’t usually have contact with art — the ones who come into class thinking, “Oh, my God, why do I have to do this?” And then to win them over and to see how they develop, from someone who first sits at the back of the classroom to moving toward the front so that he or she can see better. To see their eyes getting brighter and more interested.
And then they become more talkative. You can see how some of them are shy at the beginning, because they’re afraid of saying something wrong, and then they get more relaxed. It’s also the format of what we are doing, this discussion-based kind of work. Around midterm, those people who are a little bit afraid, a little bit uninterested, they’re getting more and more into what we are doing.
How do you innovate and/or bring your own spin to Art Hum?
I really love to talk about context, so that the students understand that whatever we are doing has a frame. Art — or literature, or music, or science, or philosophy, to touch on the other Core components — doesn’t just mushroom out of nowhere. There’s a historical context that produces or allows the production of that specific kind of art, that specific kind of architecture, that specific kind of literature, and so on. I try to make my students understand that deeply, so that when they go out and they leave Art Hum behind, they can look at all these things from a holistic perspective. Of course, you can talk about the formal aspects or even the beauty of these artworks, but I think we need to go beyond that and understand that it’s really about the history. It’s art history, after all.
On the more practical side, I love to do art projects with them; I like to make students feel that they can be artists, too. We make collages, nothing too complicated or intimidating. This is something that I think all Core classes are successfully doing — taking away the intimidation that is associated with art, with music, with literature, with philosophy. It might take some work, but it’s not impossible to understand.
What are you teaching that feels especially relevant for this year?
I would say it’s not what I teach, but how I teach. There were several occasions [this past year] where people were really on opposite sides, whether it’s Israel and Palestine or Republicans and Democrats. It was my feeling that we stopped listening to the other side, both sides stopped doing that. And so when we are having discussions, I try to create an atmosphere of sincere dialogue, where my students can express their opinions about a piece of art — when we talk about say, Goya and The Disasters Of War series, when they are encountering something that is horrible, they’re listening to the other side. They are not simply waiting for the other person to stop talking just to start talking themselves.
I tell them, take a moment to listen to what your fellow student has to say and then react to that. Don’t belittle it. Don’t say it’s wrong. Just react to it. Talk about it. Try to build on it even if it’s in opposition. That’s how I try to build a dialogue in my class, and yeah, I do think it’s relevant to the moment. Hearing both sides and having open dialogue is extremely relevant.
What has been your favorite Core Curriculum teaching moment?
It’s something that often happens after the class ends, maybe even a term or two later — I hear back from Art Hum students who might be doing nothing related to the humanities, and they tell me, “I now go to a museum with my family and I have something to tell them,” or “I can do art tours with my friends now.” When that happens, I can see the impact of what we are doing in Art Humanities on these very young lives and minds. I would say it’s the aftermath. Those are the moments that I cherish the most.