How do we teach art history to undergraduate students at a public university in the 2020s?

On the Art History and Pedagogy (AHA Pedagogy) Podcast, our host Forrest Pelsue, a PhD student and graduate teaching fellow, asks guests to help her try and answer this question. Tune in as she interviews faculty, adjuncts, and teaching fellows working in classrooms across the five boroughs of NYC about their pedagogical tips, tricks, and trials.

The academic discipline of art history has long been the milieu of the privileged and independently wealthy, while the student body of the City University of New York is largely working class and first-generation. A staple of general education requirements in the humanities, introductory art history survey courses at CUNY are often taught by graduate students with little to no previous teaching experience. This project seeks to support CUNY art history teachers at all levels—and graduate teaching fellows in particular—by sharing a series of dialogues on the particular challenges of our position.

Short, easily digestible episodes allow listeners to join in on the kinds of conversations many of us are already having between ourselves, creating a shared culture of pedagogical reflection that will help us better serve our students, present and future.