Disrupting the Introductory Art History Survey; Towards a Global, Nomadic Approach to Teaching the History of Art

Abstract

In this dissertation I argue that the continued dominance of a hegemonic Eurocentric art historical canon of objects is outdated and problematic in that it does not reflect the multicultural composition of students in today’s art history classroom. Artists and students come from a variety of backgrounds, cultures, and ethnicities and to keep art history relevant and authentic to the diversity of the art world, works from outside the European canon of objects that art history has built itself around must now be included. It is not enough to expand content within the current western narrative, but a new framework is necessary to truly globalize and decenter the canon. Discussions on how to do this have been going on for decades, yet classroom advances are often limited to a few instructors striking out on their own and making changes. I first examine how the canon and the western narrative of artistic progression came into being, via philosophical and institutional endeavors largely taking place in the 19th c, then review various critiques of the canon and why it remains so persistent today. Decolonial ideas and the theoretical concepts of Deleuze and Guattari (1992, 1994, 2005) are then presented as alternative frameworks within which a global history of art can be situated. Deterritorialization, nomadic educational theory, and the ideas of present becoming are all elements of this attempt to decenter the west to include the global other. In order to determine what such a global survey might look like, and evaluate what has worked and what has not, a study of 34 US-based faculty who have made some changes to their course content was conducted. The results of this case study, along with another survey of 35 undergraduate student responses to a nonwestern survey course organized in a thematic nomadic manner, were used to create a sample modular syllabus that might serve as a guide for future courses. Suggestions for new approaches to art historical research follow in an attempt to re-situate and re-frame the discipline within a global, nomadic context. Key Words: art history, canon, pedagogy, narrative, nomad, decolonize, deterritorialize