Presentation
"From Collaboration to Community: Art History That"
International Conference on Medieval Studies
(2017)
Abstract
International Conference on Medieval Studies
Session: Collective Roundtable
Abstract
Does working collaboratively or as a collective naturally lead to building community? It’s an aspirational assumption that is grounded in hope, but does it sustain a reality? When does collaboration merely reproduce the habits of the solo scholar? How might this tendency be tempered to promote authentic exchange of knowledge to fortify scholarly disciplines? These are questions that Art History That (AHT), a collaborative project to imagine a sustainable future for art history, has pursued since its founding. What does art history as collective social practice look like? Through its various initiatives including conference papers, published commentaries, and organized events, AHT aims to press diverse voices and initiatives into this work. In this Roundtable presentation we will offer justifications for collaborative efforts and introduce promising examples, including our own collaborations with Material Collective. At the same time, we will investigate some drawbacks to the collective model in order to spur discussion intended to re-think and move beyond familiar ways of collaborating. In their short, and smart 2016 book The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy, Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber entwine collaboration with community and collegiality, insisting on a fourth as well, conversation. Kalamazoo is famous for a fifth ingredient in this stew, conviviality. Locating scholarly innovation, creative breakthroughs, or institutional progress that emerges from conditions of shared and cooperative models, bodes well for sturdy resistance to the corporatization of the academy.
Keywords
- collaboration,
- slowprofessor,
- art history
Disciplines
Publication Date
Spring May 11, 2017
Location
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan
Citation Information
Amy K Hamlin and Karen J. Leader. ""From Collaboration to Community: Art History That"" International Conference on Medieval Studies (2017) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/akhamlin/7/