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Art History
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Pomona College’s Department of Art and Art History guides its majors as they create works of art and interpret visual imagery critically and historically.
I. Learning Objectives to Be Assessed in Art History:
1. Students will gain knowledge of the theory, history, and philosophy of art.
2. Students will gain knowledge of a large set of art objects from cultures and periods stretching from the present to the past.
3. Students will learn how to communicate effectively about art works in both written and oral forms.
4. Students will learn how to carry on research in art history effectively.
5. Students will attain the skills and knowledge to pursue a productive career or further education in art history.
II. Capstone Project in Art History
During their senior year in art history students write a sustained research paper on a subject of their choice that they demonstrate has disciplinary interest. During the fall semester faculty direct student research in a Senior Seminar that meets once each week. During the spring students collaborate closely with their faculty advisors to produce their final written theses.
III. Assessment Measures to Be Adopted
Direct Measures
Faculty in art history, plus one other expert from outside the department, read the senior theses. The outside expert and the departmental faculty also gather during mid-May to hear the graduating seniors defend their theses in public orally. Together the faculty and outside expert examine both
performances, written and oral, for specific content indicating the graduating seniors’ attainment of the departmental learning objectives 1 through 4 as stated above. The student’s performances will be graded on each learning objective using a twelve-point system (where A = 12, B+ =11, and so forth).
Statistics compiled in this fashion will be archived and compared year-by-year to reveal trends and provide guidance for teaching improvements or adjustments.
Indirect Measures
Alumni Surveys: As an indirect measure of learning objective 5, faculty survey graduating seniors each year to determine their perceptions regarding their preparedness for a career or further education in art history.
Competitive Activity: As a further indirect measure of success or failure to meet learning objective 5 above, faculty will survey graduating seniors to determine how many have found internships, professional positions, and/or been admitted to graduate study. Faculty will track particularly their seniors’ success in finding fellowship aid for further study and whether any have attained outside recognition (e.g., in a juried publication; or in an invited talk or other presentation, and so forth). The faculty expects—and hopes this survey will document—that liberally educated students with a major in art history go on to achieve success in many different fields as well as in art history.
ART HISTORY 191A/B: SENIOR THESIS IN ART HISTORY
What is a Senior Thesis?
The faculty in the Pitzer, Pomona, and Scripps College Joint Program in Art
History require all majors to take Art History 191A/B, a course of independent
study, always letter graded, which culminates in a paper that demonstrates the
student’s ability to
define a problem of art historical interest, use the resources readily available
in our libraries, museums, and galleries to carry on an investigation that
clarifies and/or resolves the question or questions posed, and present the
results of the study with full documentation in clear prose following standard
academic form.
Thesis writers complete their work by clearly presenting their results orally in
public.
Seniors develop their theses over the course of one full academic year, devoting
a half-credit course to the project each semester. They begin in the senior
thesis seminar 191A, which meets weekly in the fall; they continue in 191B
during the spring semester, meeting weekly with their first reader or project
advisor. During the spring, thesis writers may meet two or three more times in
group sessions led by the 191A professor.
First and Second Readers for the Thesis
Each senior thesis must be read by two faculty members: a main advisor and a
second reader. Students should ideally select their main advisor from among
those faculty with whom they have actually studied, and in whose field of
expertise the proposed topic of study lies. The second reader may be any other
faculty member (and need not be an art historian). The first reader works
closely with the student during all phases of the thesis-writing project. The
second reader may opt to read only an outline of the project, and then the
finished thesis proper, or may be more involved, reading drafts of individual
chapters or of the complete thesis before reading it in its final form. Each
reader will evaluate the thesis independently, then consult on a grade. (In the
unlikely event they are unable to agree on a grade, a third reader will be
appointed in consultation with the Dean of Faculty, and the grade for the thesis
will be established by a majority vote among the three readers.)
Selecting a Topic
Art history is an academic discipline and the topic that a student selects must
have disciplinary significance. The best topics will link up with issues and
concerns that currently occupy professionals in the field. Students begin by
traveling paths marked out by others as full participants in the art historical
enterprise. Having thus investigated a body of literature on a given topic and
appraised others’ results, they attempt to push at the art historical frontiers,
to ask new questions, reframe disciplinary issues, and create new knowledge.
Art historians have traditionally taken up such topics as:
----iconographical themes
----stylistic developments
----problems in connoisseurship (How might we attribute art works whose
provenance and creator or creators are unknown?)
----historiographic issues (How have people written about art?)
----patronage and reception (Who made an art work and for what
audience?)
----display of art in a museum or gallery (Museum practice?)
----critical theory (What is good art? What is a good display of art?
What is the proper use of art? What is art?)
And the list goes on. But each of these topics has only an illusory autonomy or
integrity and no art historical research project ever focuses purely on any one
of them. Challenges to the traditional disciplinary endeavor from literary
criticism, sociology, anthropology, economic theory, religious study, political
theory, feminist thought, psychology, semiotics, and so forth have reshaped it
radically—at its roots—in the last half century. Seniors explore and discuss
this disciplinary crisis in ARHI191A.
Citation
The advanced student already takes care to cite the work of others accurately
and avoid any charge of plagiarizing; this topic will be discussed again in the
senior thesis seminar. No study of any question can proceed in orderly fashion
if the scholars engaged in the work do not set out the genealogy of ideas and
information clearly. All scholars are obliged to leave a trace of their work,
and all can expect those traces to be respected by others. Students following
normal academic practice must not present the words of others as their own, but
paraphrase and then attribute the borrowed idea or information as appropriate.
They may do so either in the text proper, for emphasis; in a footnote; or in
both places. Of course, quotations from others, carefully attributed, may be
used (the actual words of a writer may well be important to your argument).
Quotations of more than 50 words should be set off from the text by indentation,
in single-spaced blocks.
Not only are scholars obliged to refer scrupulously to the work of others they
depend on, they do so in order to highlight and draw attention to their own
original ideas. At bottom citation constitutes a rhetorical strategy that leads
a reader of a text quickly to its writer’s own special contributions, which thus
stand out more clearly.
Art historians, like historians generally in the U.S.A., format their
manuscripts using The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed. (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2003). See
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html
The Length and Appearance of the Thesis
The thesis must be prepared on a word processor and printed on good-quality 8 ½
x 11-inch paper in the Times New Roman font at 12-point size. The text must be
double spaced with adequate margins (1” all around). Students must use
footnotes, numbered consecutively chapter-by-chapter and single-spaced (with
superscript numbers).
Theses ought to be of a length that will allow the writer opportunity to develop
her/his topic fully, taking into account the limits on time that a one-credit
course comprises. Normally a senior thesis in art history will run about 60
pages.
Theses will include (in this order):
a title page
acknowledgments
a table of contents
the text with footnotes
appendices (if any)
bibliography
illustrations
Please number your illustrations consecutively throughout (not
chapter-by-chapter), give each a title, and indicate the source. Please gather
illustrations at the end of the thesis.
Students prepare two copies of the thesis, one for each reader, and bind both in
hard or semi-hard covers. The first reader’s copy will be placed in the
departmental library.
Grading the Senior Thesis
A student’s accomplishment in Art History 191A/B will be graded in much the same
fashion as his/her work in any other course in art history, except that any
grade less than a C will be considered failing and will oblige the student to
rewrite the thesis.
Upon successfully completing the half-credit course 191A in the fall, seniors
will receive the grade of “N” (= In Progress). When they submit their theses and
defend them orally at the end of 191B in the spring, the letter grade they
receive will be entered in their transcripts for each half course. Again: the
senior thesis exercise counts for one full course credit, no less but no more,
and seniors and their advisors should scale their work and their expectations
accordingly. The grade for 191A/B takes into account the quality of both a
student’s completed thesis and that student’s final oral report on results.
The joint art history program of Pitzer, Pomona, and Scripps College has
established the following three general levels of student accomplishment for the
senior capstone exercise:
A/A- These grades indicate that a student has produced a thesis of considerable
originality which clearly pushes at an art historical frontier. The text will be
lucid, even eloquent, and the documentation apt and complete; the oral
presentation will be crisply compact and will compel assent. A- would indicate
some slight deficiency in meeting these standards—for example, an argument that
does not quite hold up under scrutiny, a documentation that for any reason does
not seem quite so apt, and so forth.
B, B+, or B- These grades indicate a good, dutiful, and well done thesis, one in
which the writer scrupulously follows through and presents her/his ideas orally
in public with clarity. Very likely the student’s research program will have
stopped short of the disciplinary frontier, but will nevertheless have dealt
with the literature on the topic adequately. The test will be clear and
error-free, but the arguments will not be as rich nor as thorough as those
graded A or A-. The B+ indicates a thesis of superior quality in this range, but
one still lacking the originality and perception of the best theses. The B-
would be flawed in its presentation textually and orally, having some unclear
arguments or omissions.
C or C+ These heart-wrenching grades indicate a barely adequate thesis, one in
which the student’s entire project is marked by minimal effort, commitment, or
desire to excel. The presentation in textual and oral form will be
understandable on the whole though there may be serious flaws in the arguments,
halting expression and/or inadequacies in the tracing of the literature on the
topic.
Nota Bene: In evaluating the senior thesis, the first reader shall consult with
the second: both must agree on the final grade.
Calendar for Thesis Writers
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