Teaching
1. General
The big challenge is to integrate new digital representational media into the teaching of the buildings of the past. We did this as a team last Spring in a course called “Wired!” which was an extraordinary experience. Here’s the team:
The Wired! Faculty
Here are the student projects from Spring 2009, produced by teams of 2-4 students in a few weeks. They still need work, and what seems fundamental to me is that each project be embedded in the scholarly context: documents, bibliography, discussion.
http://www.jhfc.duke.edu/olson/courses/wired/final-projects
2. Graduate Teaching
courses: Medieval Death and Burial; the Mendicant Revolution; the Friars and the City; the Cathedral and the City
3. Undergraduate Courses
Medieval South Italy; Gothic Cathedrals (see below); Medieval Architecture; Introduction to Art History (Caves to Giotto)
Spring 2010: Art History 110: Gothic Cathedrals.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW3_Hx6G3K0
This course teaches the history of Gothic Cathedral architecture from about 1140 to 1300. While the students are learning the historical material, they are also working in teams of three to design the history of their own cathedral, which includes a fictional historical narrative from Christianization to the construction of the medieval cathedral, the groundplan, elevation, section and facade of a cathedral according to a particular date (for example, 1180, 1220, 1250), and its glass and stone decoration. Prizes are given to the best projects, which are presented publicly in front of a jury.
http://cit.duke.edu/blog/2008/10/28/duke-senior-creates-virtual-cathedral/
See also some student projects on this site (scroll down to Cathedrals blog)
http://cit.duke.edu/blog/category/duke-link/#SlideFrame_3
Spring 2010: The Mendicant Revolution, with Fiona Somerset (English Dept)
This course will examine the impact of the friars on the art, architecture, literature and urbanism of the Late Middle Ages
4. Independent Study Projects
Caroline Schermer: the Mendicants in Rome