Student Life

Now that I have told you about how I became interested in studying art history and Byzantium I’ll talk about how I went about applying to graduate school how I and made the decision to attend.

This week I have been interviewing professors and students at Puget Sound for a project I am working on about graduate school in the humanities. I’m interested in a series of articles from the Chronicle of Higher Education advising would-be PhD students against entering graduate school in the humanities. The author of the articles cites dire job prospects, high rates of attrition and high financial risks involved. He does not think it is worthwhile for students to undertake a PhD in the humanities unless they are independently wealthy, have a spouse who can support them, or have no expectations of finding tenure-track employment after graduation. One of the things I have been looking through my interviews is whether or not students and professors find this advice unrealistically harsh or an accurate representation. The responses I have received so far are extremely varied. One student was wholly unfazed by the articles’ warnings, yet one professor I spoke with said they were perhaps not harsh enough.

The obvious issue with this advice is that someone does actually have to go to graduate school in the humanities. Even with cutbacks, universities still need to hire some new professors. If everyone really did follow the Chronicle articles’ advice and stopped going to graduate school there would eventually be nobody left. If someone does have to go to graduate school how can students know if they are that person? When I asked professors this question they said it was difficult to answer. They agreed that students must have a passion and commitment to their desired field but that it does not necessarily mean they will be successful. One professor said that while she has no clear cut way of knowing who will succeed, advanced writing skills are probably the best indicator.

All of this information is overwhelming. My discovery of the Chronicle articles this summer corresponded with the high point of my stress level and feelings of inadequacy over the outcome of my summer research. I swore off art history (for all of a month and a half) and was determined to make myself want a corporate career and a sure-thing job. This was a weird month for me and its weirdness was fueled by the fact that I thought I had been a complete and utter failure at summer research. I was wrong. What I was really experiencing was a totally normal part of committing myself to a project and not having it turn out exactly as I had planned.

Summer research is tricky. You go into it thinking you have all the time in the world to prove a thesis that is so groundbreaking and profound it will literally alter the future of your discipline (just me?). You’re used to having 2-4 weeks to research and write a 15 paper while still doing all of your other classwork and activities. You think – hey, if I can write a great paper in three weeks think of the paper I will write if I have three months! In reality it doesn’t really work that way. Three months is not as long as you would think. It takes time to get books from Summit and Worldcat and it takes even more time to read them. When you think you have all the time in the world you spend ten minutes on each page taking an excessive amount notes and looking up every single footnote, reference and untranslated German word.  What I would come to realize was that doing actual grown-up research takes exponentially more time than rushed “trying to finish this paper at 2am” research. I was not a failure because I didn’t come up with any truly groundbreaking conclusions. Instead I learned how to be more self-disciplined, and got the incredible experience of being paid to do nothing but research all day and learn how to be a better scholar.

Once I got over my month-long overly dramatic identity crisis I was ready to start looking at grad schools. I knew that I only wanted to apply to school that offered terminal masters degrees. I need to get a lot more perspective before I even consider applying for a PhD. I thought about a couple schools on the east coast, but ultimately the University of Washington was the most appealing to be because of its size, faculty and location. Location is huge to me right now. I’m not going to pretend that I am not scared to death about what my life is going to be like after graduation. Being close to my friends who are staying in the area or still at Puget Sound is really important to me right now. I want to get some distance, but I also like knowing that I’m going to have many old friends around if I need them. I would also have to buy all new outerwear – I’m not sure how well Patagonia on top of formalwear goes over outside of the PNW.

For me, making the decision to attend graduate school was not difficult at all. They offered me money! If it hadn’t been for that I am not sure what my decision would have been. I feel so fortunate that I didn’t have to make a tough decision about school next year. I’m so excited to start at a new school in the fall, and knowing that I have a plan is going to make graduating much easier.

When I tell people that I study Byzantine art they are usually kind of confused. It is understandable. Before I took a class on Byzantine art in the fall of my junior year I only had a very vague idea of what Byzantium was. I knew it had to do with Eastern Europe, I knew there were mosaics and I was pretty sure Constantine was involved somehow. Beyond that however, I was not exactly interested in or aware of what went on during the empire’s more than 1,000 year existence. Yes that’s right, the Byzantine Empire lasted over 1,000 years (but you would never know that from the coverage it gets Western civ. classes)!

I’m not sure why they don’t teach more about the Byzantine Empire in school, so I have to educate friends and acquaintances about it myself. I usually start by asking if they know who Constantine is, and then gauge the direction I need to go from there. It makes sense that I would be interested in Byzantium, because I have always been kind of a contrarian who liked things no one else cared about. I love arguing the other side of an issue just to see if I can, and I have always had somewhat obscure hobbies and interests compared to my friends. I guess it would make sense that I love studying something that has prompted people to say, “I didn’t know that was a thing.” That being said, I really think that Byzantine art is amazing, and in this short space I will try to begin to tell you why.

A lot of the art produced in the Byzantine Empire parallels the works that came out of Western Europe during the same period. Both cultures produced works such as manuscripts and ivories that dealt with imperial and religious subject matter. It is in terms of style that the main differences between the two cultures become clear. Mosaics are probably the best known and most popular form of art to come out of Byzantium. Byzantine mosaics are known for their high artistic quality and use of magnificent gold tiles. My “Greatest Hits of Byzantium” list would include:

Hagia Spohia – Constantinople

–       Hagia Sophia – Chirst Mosaic  ca. 1260s (The most famous mosaic)

–       Hagia Sophia – Repentant Emperor late 9^th century (My favorite mosaic!)

Ivory of Empress Ariadne ca. 5^th century

San Vitale Mosaics, Ravenna – mid 6^th century

Icon of Christ ca. 6^th century (The oldest surviving icon of its kind)

David Plates ca. 630

Paris Psalter 10^th century

(Please note that this list is only a glimpse into Byzantine art, and heavily skewed towards my personal favorites. I also don’t own any of these images)

If the above works did not speak for themselves and you are still wondering how I became interested in Byzantine art, I can elaborate. The Paris Psalter was my gateway into Byzantine art. I won’t go into excruciating specifics, but I was fascinated by its evidence of a seemingly random, hundred-year revival of classicism in Byzantine art. Dubbed the “Macedonian Renaissance” by a twentieth century scholar, the period witnessed a revived popularity of classical themes and motifs in Byzantine art and literature.

When I applied for a summer research grant to study the manuscript I was mostly interested in the relationship between its classical and Old Testament themes. Over the course of the summer, I came to see the manuscript as a sort of jumping off point for what has become a broader art historical interest of mine: problematization of the “renaissance” and classicism. I became fascinated by the Paris Psalter and its status as an object of the so-called “Macedonian Renaissance.” The Macedonian Renaissance is interesting because it represents a short and isolated period in which classicism briefly regained and then lost popularity. Unlike the Italian Renaissance, classicism did not triumphantly squash out earlier “medieval” representational styles. What makes this interesting to a scholar of art history is that it can be used to call question to the privilege that is given to the reappearance of classicism and periods of “renaissance” throughout art. During the tenth century, the reappearance of Greco-Roman themes and motifs was not a manifestation of classical humanism’s triumph over the “dark ages.” Instead, it was arguably a momentary popularization of themes that were only popular with a small cultural elite.

If all of that was confusing, don’t worry – I am still trying to figure it all out for myself! I do hope that what you did get out of this was an introduction to all things Byzantium and a measure of understanding as to why I love Byzantine art so much.

About halfway through my sophomore year I decided that I loved studying art history and probably wanted to make a career out of it. When I tell people that I study art history they usually say one of the following: “Oh, so you’re going to be a curator?” or “So you want to work in a gallery? Like Charlotte?” but mostly they say, “What are you going to do with that?” These people are not wrong; the museum and gallery worlds are logical places to put an art history degree to use. I like going to museums but I have never had an interest in working in one, and while I love gallery opening and art hipsters I am less interested in contemporary art. My goals with art history instead veer toward academia.

The aspects of art history that most interest me are historical research, writing and visual analysis. I’ve always found that learning and writing about art came easier to me than any other subject. It’s hard for me to pinpoint exactly why I like studying art, but it has just always been something I was a natural at and never really felt like work in the same way that other subjects did.

It’s maybe ironic, but taking classes in the Religion department was what really made me realize that I wanted to keep studying art history after I graduated. Religion classes introduced me to a new way of approaching the study of art. In religion, we used theoretical models, talked about post-modernity and threw around buzzwords like “metanarrative,” “problematize,” and “routinization.” I fell in love, and it wasn’t long before I was trying to problematize everything in sight.

Being exposed to these new approaches completely changed the way I though about art history. I realized that I wasn’t interested in art because of the way it looked or because I idolized a certain artist. I was interested in art as material culture and the social, religious and political ideologies that shaped its appearance throughout history.

When I try to think about what exactly motivated my decision to pursue graduate study in art history it honestly comes down to my passion for looking at boring old things in exciting new ways. Let me be clear – I don’t think that medieval art is boring at all, but realistically I know a good amount of people would beg to differ. I jokingly refer to my preferred brand of art history as the “PoMo PreMo” (post-modern approach to the pre-modern) but I am serious about wanting to change the way people view and privilege art. Maybe I will go to graduate school and decide that art history and academia are not for me, but as of now I could not be more excited to begin.

*This post and the next two posts are a part of a blogging assignment for my English 408: Print Media class on how I became passionate about art history and my decision to go to graduate school.*