Using Asian Arts to disrupt Art History 101

As art historians, we geographically locate and contextualize visual materials and attach meanings and identities to them. Therefore, our pedagogical choices make classrooms political spaces of cultural production. Textbooks, particularly those catering to the art history survey, show an imbalance between Western and non-Western materials. Most surveys are structured around textbooks and therefore replicate this imbalance. These structural problems with the survey have led to some advocating its abolition. But, could there be value in the survey especially when non-western arts are given due significance? In this presentation, I reflect on how the art history survey, which at my institution is called Global Art History, can become a space of opportunity by the manner in which Asian arts are included in its structure. I will provide examples of how we examine specific works of art from Asia showing connections with diverse parts of the globe and will discuss a variety of assignments that help in critiquing the structural problems of the survey and reconceptualize it rather than falling prey to those imbalances. More specifically, I will discuss an interactive blog post assignment in which groups of students are asked to evaluate the textbook and analyze how the authors write about Euro-American arts in comparison with Asian, African, Islamic, and pre-colonial American arts. I will highlight student analyses of the textbook in order to reveal the pedagogical impact of this assignment and the role played by the arts of Asia in disrupting the art history survey.