Constellations

Almost a decade ago, the Department recast itself by adopting its Constellations model. This approach aims to foster, in the work that faculty and students produce, idea-driven research of broad significance. While HAA continues to emphasize expertise in specific historical areas and types of material objects—all our students leave the program as specialists in well-defined historical fields—it also wants the research its students produce to have more general interpretative and analytic value. As much as art history dissertations need to credential students as experts in nineteenth-century French painting or twelfth-century Japanese hand scrolls, the research our students produce also must concern larger conceptual questions, ranging from relations between pictures and theoretical knowledge, to the ways in which material objects function as agents within cultures, to the manner in which visual styles, objects, and ways of looking operate and circulate between cultures.

In order to foster this kind of research, the department modified its internal divisions and grouped the faculty under six Constellations that concern interpretative approaches and lines of inquiry (these currently are Visual Knowledge, Agency, Identity, Environment, Mobility/Exchange, and Temporalities). Students now assemble their dissertation committees and take their comprehensive exams in relation to these research Constellations. This new approach better positions our students for the rapidly changing environment in higher education, in the curatorial field, in academic publishing, and in the digital realm, where the ability to communicate and collaborate across subfields and disciplines grows more imperative by the day.  Faculty members also benefit from this new organization, with the opportunities for collaborative and interdisciplinary work that it offers.