Prof. Abby McEwen awarded Inaugural Do Good Campus Fund Grant
The $25,000 grant will focus on providing students opportunities to "understand the process of commissioning and installing public art."
Research in art history and archaeology is an interdisciplinary enterprise.
Engaging diverse theoretical frameworks and research methods, our faculty produce innovative scholarship in the form of books and articles, digital projects, museum exhibitions, public lectures and more. Our faculty lead national networks and conferences (including the Archaeological Institute of America and the College Art Association), providing innovative research frameworks and making significant contributions to UMD's research enterprise.
Consolidated ARTH Statement of Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
(Prepared by the DEI Task Force and Approved by GAHA May 2022)
We, the members of the Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland, affirm that Black lives matter and condemn the ongoing violence of systemic racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and other acts of injustice and harm impacting BIPOC and other marginalized people. We recognize and are willing to confront the roles of Art History and Archaeology in elevating and perpetuating Eurocentrism and its attendant systems of oppression including colonization, exploitation of labor, exploitation of the nonhuman world, sexism, classism, and white supremacy inside and outside academia. We recognize that this list is not all-inclusive and is ever evolving, and to it more will be added. Continuing the work begun by graduate students, faculty, and staff in the summer of 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by police, we commit to building and maintaining a more inclusive, equitable, anti-racist and pluralistic department. As part of this commitment, we recognize the need to confront and redress bias and harm and to challenge monocultural norms and expectations.
In this process, we are inspired by and join the campus-wide efforts to reckon with the University of Maryland’s long record of discrimination, racial injustice, and actions that undermine the very principles of intellectual and moral integrity for which we stand.
We are committed to lifting up and expanding the diversity of our department community and to improving inclusivity and equity in our departmental practices, policies, and culture. In the study and practice of art history and archaeology, diversity and differences are assets. Our department affirms that diversity is expressed in myriad forms, including race, ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation, class, immigration status, body type, language, culture, national origin, religion, age, ability, and political perspective. We are made stronger by inviting in and providing for the diverse voices, approaches and contributions that form the foundation of our twinned disciplines, and which enable our community, as a whole, to thrive. While our disciplines have collaborated in structures of oppression, we wish to affirm the role that we in the humanities and in art history and archaeology can play in helping to envision and make possible a world that is both sustainable and just.
We envision our department as a space of care, safety, and respect for all of our members. All of our voices are valuable and our actions matter. We commit to upholding this vision in our work together.
Read More about Independent Scholarly Research and Creativity Award
This article considers how the same data can be differently meaningful to students in the humanities and in data science. The focus is on a set of network data about Renaissance humanists that was extracted from historical source materials, structured, and cleaned by undergraduate students in the humanities. These students learned about a historical context as they created first travel data, and then the network data, with each student working on a single historical figure. The network data was then shared with a graduate engineering class in which students were learning R. They too were assigned to acquaint themselves with the historical figures. Both groups then created visualizations of the data using a variety of tools: Palladio, Cytoscape, and R. They were encouraged to develop their own questions based on the networks. The humanists' questions demanded that the data be reembeded in a context of historical interpretation—they wanted to reembrace contingency and uncertainty—while the engineers tried to create the clarity that would allow for a more forceful, visually comprehensible presentation of the data. This paper compares how humanities and engineering pedagogy treats data and what pedagogical outcomes can be sought and developed around data across these very different disciplines.
Read More about Thinking through Data in the Humanities and in Engineering
Read More about "Basquiat’s Currency: Art, Blackness, and the Market"
Dr. Gensheimer was awarded the 2020 Arlt Award for her book, Decoration and Display in Rome's Imperial Thermae: Messages of Power and their Popular Reception at the Baths of Caracalla (Oxford UP, 2018). In Decoration and Display in Rome's Imperial Thermae, Gensheimer analyzes the decoration of the Baths of Caracalla (inaugurated 216 CE) and elucidates its critical role in advancing Roman imperial agendas. As Gensheimer notes,"This reassessment of one of the most sophisticated examples of architectural patronage in Classical antiquity examines the specific mechanisms through which an imperial patron could use architectural decoration to emphasize his sociopolitical position relative to the thousands of people who enjoyed his benefaction." "Elevating the exceptional work of early-career humanities faculty has never been more important, and Dr. Gensheimer's brilliant work contextualizes the cultural significance of the two-thousand-year-old ancient Roman Baths of Caracalla and the role art and architecture plays in advancing the politics of imperialism. We are honored to present her with this year's prestigious Arlt Award," said Dr. Suzanne Ortega, president of the Council of Graduate Schools.
This study employs both archival and material evidence to offer fresh solutions for treating Roman sculpture and its interpretation. Beginning with an investigation of two of the most famous works to survive from Classical antiquity, the Farnese and Latin Hercules statues found in the Baths of Caracalla, this paper demonstrates how Roman sculpture acquires true meaning - not just aesthetic value - through precise context. Understood as part of an overall decorative program, these statues shed light on the material culture of Roman bathing complexes and the underlying rationale of imperial patronage. In comparison, this paper argues that the so-called Giustiniani Hercules statues said to be from the Baths of Nero, which lack archaeological documentation of their findspot, cannot be interpreted with the same degree of nuance as their securely documented comparanda from the Baths of Caracalla. This paper, then, not only proposes news insights into the four statues under review, but also a new framework for discussing both an imperial patron's intentions with regard to sculptural display and that sculpture's possible reception by the ancient viewer.
Book and exhibition review of the first major retrospective in over 30 years devoted to Charles White’s career and impact. Published in Art Journal.