Noni Brynjolson is an Assistant Professor of Art History at Minnesota State University Moorhead.

In Fall 2024, I moved to a new city, started a new job, and began to teach a new set of introductory art history courses. On top of these big life changes, I was also teaching the art history survey course from a global perspective for the very first time (at my previous institution, the survey course I taught was purely Western focused). I had to become familiar with a large amount of content fairly quickly, and figure out how much to include and what to cut out. I used Thames & Hudson’s The History of Art: A Global View textbook and found many of its features to be helpful time savers in transitioning to teaching with a global approach. There are many different approaches I could have taken, but what follows are some practical tips from my first year of teaching globally. 

Less Can Be More

When I switched over to using The History of Art: A Global View, it meant completely changing the familiar structure of the course, including the narrative associated with Western survey courses in art history. The course that I taught during my first semester was Global Art Survey I, which covers prehistoric art up to the 13th century, and was typically taught as a lecture-style course with around 40 students. One of the things I realized about a month into the course was that less was more. It took meeting with several stressed-out students during my office hours to realize that we were covering too much, and too quickly. I started to focus on fewer examples during each lecture and spent more time covering them in more detail. In choosing these artworks, I tried to select a handful to highlight that students indicated some familiarity with in a pre-semester survey—for example, illuminated manuscripts in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. I also deliberately chose examples that most students in my course were not familiar with, such as the Korean chaekgori tradition in the 19th century, which turned out to be a favorite subject of many in the class. In general, what I found to be particularly helpful was making connections to key themes and broader narratives emphasized throughout the course, regardless of the time and place I was covering. This emphasis on fewer examples had a major impact, and in their end-of-semester evaluations many students said it benefited their learning. Students enjoyed going into more detail during lectures on a handful of artworks and having me provide additional context and information.  

Reframing Expertise 

I also found that it was important to acknowledge right at the beginning of the course that I am not an expert in all areas of art history—and that no scholar is or can be. During the first class I shared with students my research focus on modern and contemporary art, specifically forms of public and participatory art, and made some connections between what I study and the art we would be focusing on. I also told them that even though I’m not an expert in Egyptian art, for example, my aim would be to give them the tools they would need to study it, look carefully, critically analyze artworks, and find relevant research sources. We also practiced using art history–related vocabulary and concepts with examples of artworks from every time period and culture covered in the course. One of the things that I was initially most afraid of when I started teaching five years ago was not knowing the answer to a specific question asked in class. Now, when I truly don’t know the answer to a content-related question, I will find a good scholarly source on it after the class is over and then start there at the beginning next time—a helpful way to model research methods and show students that using journal and books sources does not have to be intimidating. 

Multiple Ways to Learn  

Another frequent comment I received from students over the past year was that they appreciated having multiple ways to learn. Part of this involved trying to mix up lecturing with discussion and writing activities in class, which I have always found helpful as a way to engage students in the material. Some of this also had to do with the resources that came with the textbook—students enjoyed having the chapters to read, integrated videos, and the InQuizitive feature of the book (discussed below) that helped them with tests and exams. Discussions in class are another helpful way to learn, and I based many of my discussion prompts on questions from the book. This was a time saver too—relying on some of the resources that are included in the book that have already been written by other experts. 

Using Courseware to Support Students 

InQuizitive, Norton’s adaptive learning tool, was one of the features of the book that I found to be a helpful time saver. Students completed weekly quizzes on their own time for participation points, which allowed them to get practice with the material without feeling overly stressed out about getting the right answers. Many of them commented on enjoying the interactive, game-like feeling of it, and it helped them retain information on tests and exams. Using it meant that I did not have to spend time writing my own short quiz questions because, once again, I could rely on the expertise of others. It also meant that students practiced foundational Bloom’s skills, such as remembering and understanding outside of the classroom, and in-class time could be spent on developing higher-level critical thinking skills.  

Creating Engaging Assignments  

Several specific activities and assignments worked well in the course, and I found it helpful to base some of them on the Seeing Connections features in the textbook—two-page spreads that help students make cross-cultural comparisons. These were great in terms of helping students feel more connected to the artworks, and get a sense of some of the debates and issues that art historians engage with in their research. One example of an in-class activity I planned revolved around the Seeing Connections feature “Stolen Things: Looting and Repatriation of Ancient Objects.” I asked students to read the chapter before class and come prepared to discuss in small groups the issues it raised. Then I shared some examples at the beginning of class, gave a short lecture, and put some questions on the screen. Students talked through the chapter’s discussion questions and then shared with the rest of the class. At the end, I used exit tickets and asked them to summarize their group’s discussion. This was one of the most lively discussions throughout the semester, and a topic that many students repeatedly referenced and returned to during later class discussions and written assignments.  

I have found this approach to be helpful, especially in building up to the Comparative Analysis written assignment that we do in the class later in the semester (an in-class writing assignment now because of AI, a topic for another blog post!). For this assignment, students choose artworks to compare from two different cultures or time periods. They think critically about the idea of comparison across cultures, and some of the reasons for making comparisons and finding connections. Many students have written thoughtful reflections that demonstrate how comparative analysis can illuminate both shared values and differing worldviews across cultures and time periods, and make abstract concepts like colonialism feel more concrete.  
 
These tips are by no means exhaustive, but I found them to be helpful in saving time, managing a huge amount of content, and engaging students as I transitioned to teaching a global art survey course over the past year.  

Review Noni’s global art history syllabus and start exploring The History of Art now. 

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