Cultivating Artist Historians: Pedagogically Productive Presentisms and Human Creativity in the Age of AI

Over the past decade, changing media environments have fundamentally transformed the ways in which students interface with knowledge. Whereas social media and video streaming apps have reinforced a certain form of technological presentism, advancements in generative AI have changed students’ relationships with writing. In addressing the latter, some have devised ways to incorporate apps such as ChatGPT by reframing assignments as exercises in critical reading. Others have either turned towards in-class, hand-written assignments or begun rethinking the structure of assignments entirely, coming up with new formats that are still beyond the reproductive capacity of generative AI. Teaching premodern Asian art offers an additional set of challenges in that the material is often both temporally and geographically removed from students’ personal experiences. Over the past year, I have been experimenting with new types of “AI-proof” creative assignments intended to bridge the gap between deep histories and temporal presents. Whereas some incorporate films and video games, the most successful have been ones that invite students to imagine themselves as artists charged with the task of designing works that draw directly upon materials from different historical past. In addition to producing a rough sketch of their image, students are required to write an essay explaining how and why they were inspired by their source materials, considering both their historical contexts as well as their utility for engaging present-day concerns. In addition to making Asian art “fun,” these assignments cultivated more vibrant classroom environments by encouraging students to deeply connect with course materials.