Byzantium Fail.

[wizzard890]

+

My medieval art history teacher is a lovely woman. She is a graduate student, and appears to be very knowledgeable in her field (secular medieval art, which promises to be delightful, once we come to it). Sure, she's a bit of a snooze, and the class is three hours and long and late at night and full of people who ask questions about why there

Comments

[byzantienne]

oh my god you probably do have an idea of my incandescent rage.

BUT STILL.

do you want good books on Byzantine art we could read them together

[wizzard890]

Why yes miss I would like that very much indeed~

(Inappropriate-for-this-discussion icon is inappropriate for this discussion.)

[scribblefish]

Uuugh... just... No....

[wizzard890]

TEACHER, I AM DISAPPOINT.

[ajodasso]

That is...beyond horrifying. However, I'm in stitches over this:

the vague unhingedness of medieval British sensibilities

...because it's true, hee!

[wizzard890]

They were all a little cracked, and they liked it that way!

[plushielover177]

So we spent the entire class on early Christian and Byzantine art.

Yeah... I have little to no knowledge of the Byzantine empire and that still sounded wrong to me. :/

[wizzard890]

So it stands to reason that a TA should know this!

[robina1984]

I never HEARD of Byzantine art and guessed they wouldn't go well together so...yeah.

Your entries always make me feel so uninformed....

[sekrit_omg]

Well, okay, in your teacher's defense -- don't make all these assumptions about why she's using the time this way. An entire semester is short. A three-hour class is relatively short. (You know, relatively.) It's a survey and she's trying her best, I'm sure. She would probably appreciate it if you talked to her about this issue. But she has to make some kind of editorial decisions about what and how and when to teach everything, and something was definitely going to be shortchanged. I mean, have you ever taught an art history survey in which everything from the fall of Rome to Giotto had to be shoved into exactly three hours? It's not easy.

[wizzard890]

You're right, it's a lot to cover! But this is skipping a fundamental building block for what is going to come down the pipeline the rest of the semester. It would be like deciding to skimp on learning about the Enlightenment before leaping into the history of the American Revolution! Yeah, you can still learn, but your comprehension will be the poorer for it.

And yeah, I do plan to bring it up with her at some point! I mean, I'd just like to hear if she has a solid reason.

[sekrit_omg]

I would seriously talk to your teacher. I'm sure she has a reason and it probably has to do with time constraints. Also, teachers like to hear that their students are so invested in the course.

That said, in an ideal world you'd have comprehensive coverage of the European Enlightenment before covering the American Revolution, but it usually gets a mention. It's sad when you take a course and it doesn't jive with your expectations. It happens to me at least once a semester. But teaching is so hard, man. You can't teach everything.