Earlier this month, I saw an incredible movie, Footnote. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, something that must have been an easy choice given how wonderful the script and filmmaking are. (Minor spoilers follow!) Here is a synopsis  of the film from Sony Pictures Classics:

The film reminded me of my very first introduction to academia. When I was four or five years old, my mom, then a graduate student in theology, took me with her on an errand to one of her professor’s office hours. Like her, he had a small child, and we both loved Legos. That day, the professor presented me with the biggest tub of Legos I have ever seen. It was as tall as I was. Enamored with this Santa Claus-esque man, I wanted to know more about him. As we were leaving, I asked my mom who he was and what he did. “He’s a thinker doctor,” she said, “He gets paid to think.” (Translation: philosophy professor). My eyes got wide, I’m sure, and those words would stick with me until present day: he gets paid… to think. He must be really smart, I thought. I’m sure I also thought that I would never be smart enough to be a “thinker doctor” or get paid for my thoughts. Twenty years later, I’m eager to challenge my mind through an academic life.

“Footnote” struck a chord in me. It’s the type of film that stays with you, gnaws at you, the kind that you need to chew on for a long time. It was a powerful statement about academic success and the importance of academic flexibility, but also a poignant story of a family that has been pulled into their patriarch’s work and the consequences that follow. The father, Eliezer, has only been cited once in his entire decades-long career. His greatest dream (that he treasures secretly within himself) is to be recognized for his work, so when the call comes that he won the prize, he awakens as if from a deadened sleep. His son, Uriel, has received many accolades for his own work, which is theoretical as opposed to his father’s more scientific, exact methods. Eliezer is extremely stubborn and unwilling to compliment his son’s work or accomplishments because he disagrees with Uriel’s methods. Eliezer’s stubbornness and refusal to express pride in his son’s work only worsens after he wins the coveted prize. Uriel desires Eliezer’s approval as a father, if not an academic, and, when Eliezer wins the Israel Prize, Uriel makes huge personal and career sacrifices to ensure not just his father’s happiness, but his father’s feeling of success. This was the moment Eliezer had secretly been waiting for. Who was Uriel — or the decisions committee, which Eliezer’s arch-nemesis chaired — to say that his father’s work wasn’t good enough to have won the prize or that he didn’t deserve it after decades of dedication to his field? And so, Uriel defends his father’s right to the prize.

Eliezer sends his work to the wind after a heart-wrenching development in his academic career occurs.

The film ends on a thought-provoking note. Ever since, I’ve been thinking about many of the issues the film addresses. In addition to examining issues such as inter-departmental competition, familial father-son conflicts, and the sacrifices we make to achieve our dreams, one of the biggest questions the film raised is what makes an academic successful? Is it the number of awards he has? Can he be considered successful if he has never (or scarcely) been cited by his peers? Is success in the eye of the beholder? Is it determined by a mix of all of these, or none of these?  Footnote also raises the question of academic stubbornness. Does sticking to one method, and one method only, set one up for failure (or lack of recognition) later on? I’ve always been of the conviction that academic flexibility — willingness to explore work that uses other methods than your own — is of paramount importance as a scholar.  These questions have been strangely fun to think about over the past few weeks and as I prepare for graduate school.

I’d like to close with these encouraging words Eliezer spoke to one of his students (they are, the film says, some of  his favorites):

Your paper is good, “only the new things are not correct and the correct things are not new.”

Tags: Academia, Academic Competition, Film, Footnote, Israel Prize, Musings, School

In the March 2012 issue of the Art Bulletin, Notes From the Field discusses anthropomorphism. What is it? Is it a good term, or bad? Does it make sense in the modern world? Is it in the eye of the beholder, or can we define it in concrete terms? I am not a distinguished professor (if I can state the obvious), but I nevertheless am compelled to respond to some of the explanations presented.

I suppose I should begin by defining what I think anthropomorphism is, although given all the debate presented in the Art Bulletin I am beginning to doubt that any single definition is sufficient let alone if I will ever really know what it means. Carolyn Dean argues that “[t]o practice anthropomorphism is to employ a category that does not resonate universally.” While I understand her point (which we will examine below), I can’t say I agree. Anthropomorphism to me is the resemblance of humanity in a work of art and/or the implanting of human characteristics, ideals, etc. into a work of art. Perhaps the latter can be termed anthropomorphic meaning and the former is simply, anthropomorphism, or (physically) resembling humans.

Pedro de Mena, St. Francis (detail), 1663.

The first discussion, by artist Elizabeth King, discusses anthropomorphism as the notion that anthropomorphism is the physical resemblance of humans, and that we in turn respond to and recognize that resemblance.  Of a polychrome sculpture of Saint Francis, she writes:

It’s easy to respond to something that we recognize as being like ourselves. St. Francis is human, after all, even if a saint. We see him catching his breath, responding and living within this small sculpture the way we respond and live, reminding us of the realities of faith.

But what about when the art we view is not so “human,” not so readily recognizable as being similar to us? Then again, who is “us“?

Carolyn Dean explains anthropomorphism from the worldviews of the Quechua speakers, who live in the Andes, and the Inca. For the Quechua speakers, anthropomorphism in “our” (or “Western”) terms presents itself as something unfamiliar to “us.” The Andeans

For the Quechua speaking people, then, anthropomorphism in its own way has been ubiquitous across their culture for centuries: human beings are called runa, and runa are categorized according to the above. Anthropomorphism isn’t a relevant term to art of this culture since they have their own set of criteria for determining what is and is not like them. Art historians of “Western” thought wouldn’t necessarily define anthropomorphism in this sense. Art displays anthropomorphic traits when it is simply resembling humans — there is no deeper distinction or division.

And this brings us to Carolyn Dean’s next point, that for the Inca, anthropomorphic qualities were seen in things that were inherently not human (by scientific terms), namely, in rocks:

Dean’s discussions of the Quechua speakers and the Inca beg the questions if anthropomorphism, like many things, is in the eye of the beholder, if its definitions vary by culture, if it’s even a wise or relevant term that art historians can use to describe human qualities.  I wouldn’t have understood rocks in Inca culture to have such qualities unless someone had told me. Someone did, and now that rocks are imbued with humanity, what is the signifier in art that denotes that I am looking at something anthropomorphic, like me?

Is anthropomorphism — humanity in art — simply not possible in a world that increasingly reduces things to scientific terms, as J.M. Bernstein toys with? He writes:

Can or should we support “scientific naturalism” — taking anthropomorphism and its qualities, and trading them for a humanity that  is measured solely through science? What would become of art, that “natural abode of anthropomorphism”? Art is, after all, as Bernstein describes it “a moment in an endless effort to ascribe human form to the forever nonhuman, as if we could only make sense of humanity by seeing it projected onto what is patently other than human.” Art, as an inanimate object, isn’t human. Yet, we imbue it with human form, have it eschew human morals and beliefs, recognize it as being in a way “like us.”

But what happens when art, for its viewers, is human, or … divine? Jane Garnett and Gervase Rosser collaborate to discuss the miraculous image.  Miraculous images are found all over societies, on walls, in churches, in private chapels, in homes, causing the faithful to remember the power of these images and respond to the divine with thanks. Although I found the discussion slightly out of place in the consistent and thorough discussion taking place of “anthropomorphism” proper, the article was nonetheless thought provoking. The questions it addressed and raised were how humans respond to art, especially art that portrays a divine event, is itself imbued with divinity, and/or commemorates the faithfulness of the divine. Often, these images lend themselves to a communal yet private experience. For example, an effigy of the Virgin Mary was paraded through the streets of one village. In those moments, she was Mary, bringing with her all the virtues of her heavenly position. The effigy connected with the community as a whole and served as symbol of their collective faith but it also lent itself to private experiences of awe and worship with individual members of the community as they gazed up at her. Such experiences are not just for the modern world. In Baroque Spain, for instance, polychromed sculptures, usually specifically designed for procession, pasos, would be carried through the streets, with the community gathered. In ancient Egypt, too, similar processions occurred with divine art. Communities come together and recognize the common deity among them. They are often in human form — with human bodies and characteristics. They bleed and cry and gaze up in awe and yet there is something intrinsically otherworldly about them and in this way, they are not human. We, the viewers, are the lesser beings before these images, asking for mercy or aid or simply being struck with the sacredness of the image. We are wounded along with these images, as Elizabeth King wrote.

And after all of this, what is anthropomorphism, really?

I will never truly know, but I can grasp at it.

Tags: Academia, Anthropomorphism, Art Bulletin, Art History, Art Theory, Artistic Intention

Today, I want to talk about triumph and the people who help us become who we are.

One of the major people in my life who took a chance on me and believed in me passed away a couple years ago. I never got to tell him that I got in to UCLA, when most of his colleagues told me I never would. I never got to tell him that I graduated from UCLA with all three of the honors that the College of Letters & Science offers. And I’ll never get to tell him that I was accepted to graduate school this year.

Mr. Spica taught AP Art History at my high school. In my senior year, I became extremely interested in this field and wanted to take the AP Art History course being offered. It was the second semester by the time enrollment opened up. The first semester covered art since the beginning of time (okay, not really) through the 15th century. Like any good teacher, Mr. Spica knew that usually the first semester of any course provides you with the foundational information you’ll need for the second semester. And thus, he was adamant that I not be allowed to enroll. I got a letter of recommendation from one of my teachers (who majored in art history in college). He still wouldn’t let me in, worried that my lack of knowledge would bring the rest of the class down and force the class to move at a slower pace. I told him that I would sit in his class until he enrolled me. This agreement worked.

My first day sitting in, he gave us a test. We were to write essays in response to slides on the screen within thirty minutes. I’d never written an art historical essay before, and I’d never seen most of the slides. I also had no idea what on earth an “art history” essay was – as if it could be any different than other essays! I remember one slide in particular, the gardens at Versailles. I had no idea why these gardens were designed as such, but  I could tell by the massive amount of land they take up and their rather ornate landscaping that whoever designed them did so as a visual and physical reminder of their power and wealth. Mr. Spica graded these essays on a scale of 0 to 5. I got a 1. My next “test” was the homework, what he called style sheets. Style sheets were charts that had an artist’s name, years active, art historical period, examples of their art, and descriptions of their style. These were graded on a scale of 1 to 10. I got a 10 on my first style sheet, and he decided to let me enroll in the class.

My fellow students told me that, with his monotone voice, I would fall asleep in Mr. Spica’s class. Some told me that it was excessively difficult and a waste of time. They were all wrong. Mr. Spica loved art history, and loved teaching it. I think his favorite was modern performance art. He went to the Hammer and LACMA frequently. For those of us who were taking the AP Art History exam, he gave us a special review night and bought us pizza. One of the most endearing things about Mr. Spica was his grading. He always graded all of our papers with a green gel pen. He was never without it.

The last day of class crept up on us. Mr. Spica did the same thing every year: the class played “art history Jeopardy.” The grand prize was a Toulouse-Lautrec kaleidoscope. The players quickly came down to me (the girl who missed half the course) and four girls who had been in the course for its full length. It was intimidating. I kept forgetting to say “What is ____” and the girls would collectively groan because I got the right answer but didn’t say it right and Mr. Spica graciously allowed my faults in proper game show procedure.

Somehow, I won art history Jeopardy. I beat out the entire class after being there for just one semester. No matter how silly this may sound, the moment I won art history Jeopardy in Mr. Spica’s twelfth grade AP art history class was an incredible triumph for me. I loved art history in a way that my other classmates didn’t. I was good at it. This small triumph confirmed it. No one, especially not Mr. Spica, thought I would win art history Jeopardy, and why should they? I think Mr. Spica’s mind was changed as he ceremoniously handed me the grand prize and announced that I must be a “space alien” because I became so good at something I had no previous experience with.

Mr. Spica wrote in my yearbook in his favorite green pen. I was so proud to be his favorite space alien.

Mr. Spica coached girl’s tennis at my high school and would often go to UCLA’s tennis matches. I worked at Coffee Bean by UCLA, and it was here, a year or so after graduation, that I told him I received a 4 (out of 5) on the AP Art History exam and that I was majoring in art history in college. He wasn’t surprised.

That was the last time I saw him.

I said at the beginning, this post is about triumph and the people who believe in us. Mr. Spica was cautious to take a chance on letting me into his class, but eventually, he did, and because he believed in my potential, I grew exponentially in a field that, some years later, I can’t imagine not being in for the rest of my life. He introduced me to the basics of art history and critiqued my writing with unabashed severity, sometimes writing “No!!” with his green pen or enclosing portions of my essays with a large, underlined, green zero. I wish I could thank him for his honest critiques. And I wish even more that I could tell him of my latest “Jeopardy” moment of triumph: getting into graduate school.

I’ve had many supportive teachers (professors) since graduating high school. I will rave forever about how incredibly generous and wonderful the professors in UCLA’s art history department are. It’s no secret that UCLA has been one of the best experiences of my life, and that I credit them with teaching me how to be a scholar. It’s also no secret that I want to make art history my career. And, thanks to the wonderful training I received at UCLA and above all, the support from my family, friends, and professors, I’ll be able to.

Beginning Fall 2012, I will be studying at my dream program, which has what I believe is one of the strongest Early Modern art history programs in the country: the University of Delaware. I am so excited to begin my studies there, specializing in (of course) Italian Baroque art!

Knowledge is the light of the mind

Tags: Academia, Graduate School, UCLA, UDel

I was going through an old stack of papers and found this interview with Peter Robb, the author of the controversial Caravaggio biography, M: The Man Who Became Caravaggio. At times, “M” was maddening. The very insistence on reducing Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s name to “M” made me think there was no way on earth I’d ever get through this book. Italics are replaced for quotation marks. Profanity abounds. And the worst part: “M” often or, some art historians would argue, altogether fails to contextualize Caravaggio’s paintings in the larger religious, militant, and aesthetic wars happening in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

I have a confession: for its many, terrible faults, I enjoyed reading “M.” It was enjoyable because most of the book was baffling to the point of being comedic, and although there are sporadic sentences of it that I genuinely did side with, it was on the whole, essentially a drawn out tabloid – full of assertions and conspiracy theories about Caravaggio’s sexuality and (my favorite part), his death. And for this, it was awful. I need to spoil the ending for you, because it should be made into a film starring Ethan Peck as Caravaggio and the Six Fingered Man from the Princess Bride as the principal villain. The start of the final chapter of “M” sets the stage for Caravaggio’s mysterious death:

Robb’s theory is that Caravaggio was killed by the Knights of Malta, and the death-by-fever on the beach story is a cleverly crafted (though slowly realized) cover up for murder. If you wish, you can preview most of the book, including this last conspiratorial chapter, on Google Books.

Anyway, “M” is not what I’d like to talk about. I felt that I should let you all know about Robb’s theory about Caravaggio’s death, because what I’d like to talk about is professional art historians.

The following is the first question and part of Robb’s answer in the interview I mentioned:

Caravaggio, St. John the Baptist, c. 1604.

As I read this, I thought how interesting that Robb condems art historians for not seeing the art in art, when he reads into Caravaggio’s art all sorts of juicy things that don’t exist within it. It’s far more reasonable to read into, say, Caravaggio’s St. John the Baptist that it is simply… St. John the Baptist — the “precedent, iconology” and religion behind it — than it is to make up some blast story about how John is somehow a come hither for its seventeenth century viewers. I also balk at the idea that art historians are “prisoners of their training and unlikely to give you any sense of why art matters.” I’m absolutely mind-boggled that Robb doesn’t realize that art historians study, write, research, and analyze for years on end because they are searching for meaning. Art historians are still historians — they just happen to specialize in art. No one would accuse “real” historians of being “prisoners to their training” and not giving us an idea of why the world is the way it is. It’s what historians do. Art historians can spend years studying one artist and still only scratch the surface of who they are, why their art is the way it is, and how their art speaks to us today. Caravaggio is a perfect example wherein historians have spent decades of their careers researching this man, his art, and the world that influenced him. Robb doesn’t give art historians enough credit for the work they’ve done and continue to do.

I also take issue with Robb’s perception of art historians’ descriptions of art as “guarded, timid, [and] inert.” If  our descriptions are such, it is only because we guard ourselves against being too liberal with describing what is physically on the canvas. (I’ll touch more on this in another portion of this interview’s Q&A below.) Describing art can easily become fantastical and turn into an analysis of something that isn’t actually there, or that is improper to consider given the constraints of the time in which the art was created. Historians have their own constraints — those of time and influence. They can’t just describe things in populist or exaggerated manners to get a rise out of people. It would be doing everyone a disservice. Accuracy is of the utmost importance.

There is so much wrong with this statement, I’m not sure where to begin. Let’s start with this: I’m an art historian, and I’m not just writing for other art historians. I’m not only refering to this website, either, but to all my work. If given the opportunity, I’d just sit in a park and read my papers to everyone. I’ve said it a thousand times: art history matters, even and especially outside of academia. No part of art history should be hidden away as we scholars converse amongst ourselves, hoarding our specialized knowledge from the outside world that might actually be interested in hearing what we have to say. People in the “real world,” perhaps now more than ever, are interested in art history. About half of readers of this website in fact, aren’t even art history professors or students, but the general public of all ages who are curious about art and its meaning.

Secondly, and this is something I seem to have to reiterate far too often, art history is an interdisciplinary field. Sure, it’s its “own” field, but one can’t study art history without studying history, religion, military history, political science, fashion, or film (depending on your area of focus). Thus, there’s not really a need to “[widen our] field of vision beyond the specialized milieu of art,” since it already is.

I certainly understand why the reviews of “M” on Amazon are so positive. “M” is entirely colloquial, which makes it a fairly quick and easy read. For the general world, quick and easy reads that are also educational are hard to come by.  Academic books are highly specialized and geared toward specific audiences. Sometimes, they are conversations between scholars, bickering amongst each other in drawn out, meticulously researched anthologies or books. Academics can’t necessarily afford to use popular language. Their publishers are often university presses or journals, and I just can’t imagine that something like Robb’s finished product would ever be acceptable to them for many reasons (especially trading quotation marks for italics).  I’ve always thought that sounding “academic” comes with experience, and yet this isn’t a bad thing. Perhaps our culture is simply not disciplined or patient enough to read something like Caravaggio: Realism, Rebellion, Reception or Caravaggio’s Secrets or even Helen Langdon’s (not-very-jargon-filled) biography of Caravaggio. Whatever it is, I don’t think Robb’s casually written book is helpful in provoking deep thought or educating with accuracy. And yet the “real world,” if Amazon is any indicator of popular belief, loves “M.”

Should we give up and just leave art to those who want to deliver it in real terms to real people?

I can’t.

While I sympathize with Robb for wanting to make art matter for the world, and in their terms, such a movement should absolutely come from the “professionals” — from museums and curators and art historians, because they know what they’re talking about. They didn’t undertake graduate study and years of research just to be brushed aside and brushed off  as “professionals,” as if they are somehow the Big Bad Wolf out to ruin art for everyone with their professional opinions and strange words. It’s a good thing that academics exist. Museums and educational programs and free public talks are good things. These serve to place art in the hands of the populous, with accurate historical context and analytical tools, and then say “Here. You’re equipped with the basic information you need. Now, go and make of art what you will.” But by all means, someone who knows nothing of history or worse, refuses to acknowledge it, should not be the one attempting to educate the masses about art of a historical time period. That will confuse everyone. I was confused after finishing “M.”I was writing my thesis, and if it wasn’t for the other reputable sources I had and my own convictions about historical accuracy and sticking to iconography, I would’ve  been an academic mess.

I wish the interview had stopped there, but it didn’t, and neither do my criticisms.

Continuing into the first question’s answer, Robb says:

Caravaggio, The Annunciation, c. 1608

This, I can agree with. I agree that by nature, artists insert themselves in some way, however small, into their work. Now, in “M,” Robb tended to find homosexual references in every last bit of exposed flesh of Caravaggio’s paintings — so, given this context, I should add that this visual autobiography artists create can’t be read into too much. Like most artists, Caravaggio had patrons who commissioned paintings that represent iconography in specific ways. (If  those original contract documents are available, they should always be referenced when analyzing a work of art lest we insert ourselves or our modern ways of thinking into our analysis.) It would also be scandalous to the point of ruin if paintings or sculptures that invited or glorified inappropriate activity were publicly and openly displayed in the rich, often pious households that Caravaggio painted for. This was, after all, seventeenth century Italy, where piety was fiercely being  guarded and reformed to fend against the Protestant movement that was gaining momentum. Art was a tool the Church used to enforce proper belief, and they would not undermine it by allowing art to be made and displayed that had ulterior meanings.  Paintings and sculptures were abandoned or not paid for if they failed to conform to the new edicts for art laid out by the Church.

The interview continues for several more questions, and that brings us to the final question that will be talked about here.

Robb begins his answer with an explanation of why he chose to call Caravaggio “M,” what contemporary sources said about Caravaggio, and his criminal record. Robb’s interpretation of Caravaggio and his violent nature is something that he thinks differentiates him from other writers.

I don’t think any art historians would characterize Caravaggio as a “murderous psychopath.” He certainly did have a “talent for trouble,” and this is speculated upon in many studies of his art and life. I’m not sure where Robb is getting the idea that art historians believe Caravaggio to be a “fairly conventional painter.” That hasn’t  been my experience with academic works about him. It’s also historically accurate to argue that Caravaggio’s violent behavior was acceptable for the time — to a degree. He once threw artichokes at a waiter’s face — that is probably not normal for seventeenth century Rome. But what is normal is Caravaggio constantly carrying a sword, or Caravaggio wearing fine noblemen’s clothing, because if history tells us anything, it’s that duels were standard practice in Baroque Rome and that men jealously guarded their honor. This doesn’t make Caravaggio any less interesting. So what if he engaged in duels like any other nobleman protecting his honor might? Nor does it make his life and art any less “disturbing,” because he obviously had some anger issues and dealt with them physically and (maybe) through his art.

There is a difference between “normalizing” a painter and placing him in the wider context of the world in which he lived, which is what art historians do. This isn’t an attempt to “deaden” Caravaggio or make his life any less significant or unique. Again, I doubt any art  historian would say that Caravaggio was just like everyone else. It’s impossible to deny that Caravaggio created an art form that was wholly new to Italy and revolutionized the aesthetics of devotion at home and abroad. As Helen Langdon, in her (much more historically accurate and indeed masterful) biography of Caravaggio, says:

Caravaggio, David with the Head of Goliath, Borghese Gallery. Date disputed: either before 1606 or circa 1610.

Much has changed in the past decade since Robb’s book (and this interview) has been published. Art historians know more about Caravaggio, old ideas are being challenged, and new ideas are being formed. And despite the rise in Caravaggio’s popularity — Caravaggiomania, as Philip Sohm calls it — I believe that our work on Caravaggio’s art and life are still unfinished. In fact, as we learn more about Caravaggio, the mysteries only seem to increase because of all the things we still don’t know.

Returning again to the theme of art as autobiography, I’d like to end with the following words from David Stone, that, as I bury myself in studying Caravaggio more, I have increasingly come to appreciate as a wonderful description of Caravaggio the Painter. These words stem from an examination of Caravaggio’s David with the Head of Goliath and of the self that Caravaggio constructed through his art:

Those words, from a professional art historian, from the academy, are not words that rob Caravaggio’s art of meaning. They imbue his art with even more meaning.

Leave art to the professional art historians, and let us become ever joyous “prisoners” of our research.

Tags: Academia, Accuracy, Caravaggio, David M. Stone, Debate, History, Italian Baroque Art, Peter Robb

William Pannapacker wants to destroy higher education in the humanities.

Yesterday, I was reading CAA’s year in review newsletter and was drawn to the title of Pannapacker’s July 27 article, Over Educated, Underemployed: How to fix higher education. Pannapacker received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1999 and is now an Associate Professor at Hope College. Given that he is an academic, I wasn’t sure what to expect upon reading the article. But I can tell you that I wasn’t expecting to be absolutely infuriated. Pannapacker seems to forget that he was, at one time, a graduate student. He singlehandedly manages to insult prospective and current graduate students everywhere.

The article begins by Pannapacker agreeing with journalist and writer Anya Kamenetz “that graduate students are ‘really smart suckers.” Already off to such a pleasant start, Pannapacker continues by stating his view on higher education in the humanities: “higher education in the humanities exists mainly to provide cheap, inexperienced teachers for undergraduates so that a shrinking percentage of tenured faculty members can meet an ever-escalating demand for specialized research.” He proceeds to tell us that he cannot recommend graduate study in the humanities unless prospective students are independently wealthy, have an extensive network, or are considering graduate school to advance up one’s current career ladder. His first suggestion for improving graduate school in the humanities is that there should be an organization that focuses on assisting and preparing graduate students for the working world. His article thus far didn’t provoke me into a rage, but everything after this point did.

Pannapacker’s second helpful hint for improving graduate studies is – and I quote this verbatim because it was shocking – Expose who’s really teaching undergraduates.

“Reliable, up-to-date information should be available about the employment practices of individual universities. Prospective undergraduates and their parents should be able to choose institutions on the basis of who is actually doing the teaching: tenured faculty with a long-term relationship to the institution and the protections of academic freedom (necessary for honest grading), or an army of transient, ill-paid, hired-at-the-last-minute adjuncts and graduate students without terminal degrees who are retained primarily on the basis of high evaluation scores from students (traded for high grades and low expectations). This information should have an impact on institutional rankings and the standing of graduates. Eventually, that might begin to reverse the trend toward gutting undergraduate teaching (now about 80 percent off the tenure track). If parents come to know how their children are being shortchanged—at such great expense—they might support reforms aimed at reallocating resources toward teaching.”

Let’s start with the first ridiculous claim, who is “really” teaching our undergraduates: “an army of transient, ill-paid, hired-at-the-last-minute adjuncts and graduate students without terminal degrees who are retained primarily on the basis of high evaluation scores from students (traded for high grades and low expectations).” Honestly? Dear Mr. Pannapacker, if graduate students aren’t teaching while in graduate school under the guidance of their more experienced professors, how else are they supposed to learn to teach? And in such a specialized manner? What graduate program would even think of letting its students graduate without teaching experience? How can you assume that TAs would happily and shadily give out high grades in exchange for or in hopes of high evaluations, and that they have low expectations? If any of my TAs at UCLA had low expectations for their students, I would not have done half as well in my “actual” (actual being work done for the high and mighty professor) coursework. My TAs would have been doing me, and themselves, a disservice by not having such high expectations. I would be disappointed because I wouldn’t be challenged enough in my education, and TAs would be disappointed because their teaching skills wouldn’t improve by clinging to the training wheels that are low expectations. One of the main reasons students enter graduate study is to learn how to become a teacher of that field and how to balance research with teaching.

The final claim in this paragraph simply made me feel sad after I read it. “If parents come to know how their children are being shortchanged—at such great expense—they might support reforms aimed at reallocating resources toward teaching.” Shortchanged? Why would graduate students be graduate students if they were not extremely knowledgable about their field? The word shortchanged assumes all of the above – that TAs have low expectations of their students and are lazy enough to not bother to try to push their students to excel. Graduate students more than anyone know the value of their field, and they can disseminate that knowledge on a more digestible level than professors often can. Parents should be grateful that their students have an “army” of graduate students whose purpose (aside from research) is to teach, share their knowledge, and along the way, to make their field more relatable and easily understandable to anyone who might be struggling with the coursework or the attending professor’s teaching.

Pannapacker’s next suggestion is to Tell the truth about graduate school. He argues that many faculty members see themselves as heroes who have “‘saved’ a student from entering business.” But faculty members, Pannapacker says, are also academic parents of sorts. They

Pannapacker’s grammar makes it difficult for me to understand if the people who have “little to no experience” in the real world are the faculty or the students (sorry, children) or both – but either way, it’s unfair of Pannapacker to assume this for either party. Professors aren’t ignorant to the goings on of the real world, regardless if they’ve ever worked in corporate America. Students are getting more experience working “outside of higher education” with each year that budgets are slashed and they are forced to enter the working world. I personally have been out of school for a year and a half, and it is not something that I relish. Some days, my brain cells feel as though they’re turning to mush. Pannapacker, this is not what you want for the smart and able graduate students of America! American is already full of enough people outside of higher education and the next generation is getting stupider as K-12 education in America slowly dies. This is not the time to be preaching that students should not become graduate students and should instead abandon academia for the drudgery of the real world, leaving their knowledge to waste in the dark gutters of their minds.

And how about the nice pat on the back for those graduate students who are lucky to be such. Pannapacker doesn’t think getting accepted into a graduate program is something to be proud of – but don’t worry, your professors do! And they’re wrong to do so. Faculty foolishly ”regard a graduate-school placement as an accomplishment…” It doesn’t matter that you’ve slaved away on your senior or Master’s thesis and produced the foundations of what likely signifies you as a promising scholar. It doesn’t matter that you paid hundreds of dollars in application fees and spent weeks hunting down, researching, and talking to prospective advisors. You wasted your money visiting schools. And when your acceptance letter came, with whatever degree of funding offered to you, you should’ve shrugged it off. Got into Harvard? Full ride? No big deal. They’re just letting “inexperienced” and “really smart suckers” in, and wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars on them. (Yes, I’m using Harvard because it’s Pannapacker’s alma mater.) Bah humbug, I say! If you got into graduate school, no matter if you attend an Ivy League or a small state school, congratulations! And to those of you hoping for a nice crisp envelope filled with good wishes in your mailbox in the next couple months, I hope you get it.

Pannapacker argues repeatedly for free information, and I have nothing against making information, especially statistics about job placement, readily available to prospective and current students. This brings us to Pannapacker’s fourth and fifths points: Disrupt the graduate-school labor scheme and Train students for real careers. The fourth point of this article doesn’t appear to represent any real threat to morale in the same way the previous sections have. However, it is erroneous. I have spoken to professors from Ivy Leagues, small schools, and public but privately funded schools across the nation over the past year and a half, and not one of them let me off the phone without telling me about their department’s success or difficulties with job placement, whether I asked or not.

Pannapacker’s fifth point is more problematic. In one of the longest run-on sentences ever, he writes:

“Graduate programs must stop stigmatizing everything besides tenure-track positions at research universities that almost no one will get. They should cultivate an “alternative academic” sensibility by redesigning graduate school as professional training, including internships and networking opportunities, and working with other departments and programs, including partnerships with other institutions, granting agencies, government, and business to cultivate humanists who are prepared for hybrid careers in technology (“the digital humanities”), research, consulting, fundraising, publishing, and ethical leadership. … The largest challenge [facing these reforms] is the misguided investment of most tenured faculty members in the current system combined with the passivity of most graduate students and adjuncts, aggravated by the fear of unemployment that is now a permanent characteristic of academic life.”

In the four years of research I’ve done about graduate school and various programs,  I’ve never had the sense that graduate school as a whole was just going to train me for a life in academia. I realized that in a way, graduate school is what you make of it. It was obvious to me that if I wanted to gear my studies more toward curating, I knew I’d need to have internships in museums or galleries and coursework in conservation and museum studies before I’d be truly prepared for a curatorial position. If I wanted to simply be a professor, graduate school was already going to prepare me for that through teaching assistantships. It’s difficult for me to think of a single person I’ve talked to considering graduate school in the humanities who wants to use their humanities degree in the corporate world. This isn’t because they aren’t aware of their options. It is because an advanced degree in the humanities signifies something deeper than just wanting to build a career in the corporate world. It means that the person getting the degree has decided to devote a significant portion of their life to the detailed study of whatever field they’re in, and that they hope to continue that curiosity once they obtain their degree. Certainly there is nothing wrong with using one’s degree in any of the areas Pannapacker mentioned; I just think there is a disconnect between his idea that current graduate programs stigmatize “alternative” career options.

I’ve spoken to a lot of professors over the years, and I had one professor tell me that one of his active goals is to check his graduate students’ C.V.s after each semester. They discuss how professor and student could work together to make the C.V. as attractive as possible, be it through publication of a recent paper or co-authoring an article together. He also told me he actively seeks out internships and other opportunities for his students and has had incredible success placing them in jobs after they graduate because of the personal attention he gives his students. He’s assisted in placing his students happily in traditional teaching positions, conservation, curatorial work, non-profit work, and even, if memory serves me, government work.What a teacher! After that conversation, this professor became one of my academic heroes. He represents a unique case in the professors I’ve had the pleasure of speaking to – but only because he went so in depth with me about his concerns and efforts. Another professor was candid with me and told me that their department had tough luck placing students in recent years, and that I should take that into consideration. In my experience, professors do absolutely care about the placement of their students, wish for their success, and strive to assist their students in discovering what the best career option is for them.

Finally, we arrive at Pannapacker’s sixth point, which is equally disturbing as the second: Just walk away.

Pannapacker’s article ignited such debate in the comments section on Slate that Slate published a followup article with responses from current graduate students. What do you think of Pannapacker’s ideas to improve graduate school in the humanities?

Tags: Academia, Essay, Grad school, Higher Education, Humanities, News, Opinion