February 28, 2012
Architecture professor delivers paper at the centennial conference of the College Art Association
Mick Charney, associate professor of architecture, presented the paper "Water, Water Everywhere: Charting New Courses for Architectural History" at the centennial conference of the College Art Association of America, Feb. 22-25, Los Angeles.
In a session sponsored by the Society of Architectural Historians and dedicated to the exposition of the integration of non-Western stories into comprehensive histories of a global architecture, Charney modeled strategies by which instructors of introductory survey courses can challenge the inordinate attention usually paid to canonical buildings as well as doctrines of Western cultural hegemony. Leveraging a seafaring proposition to highlight the political, economic, and artistic exchanges between Africa, China, and Indonesia in the 1400s, the era of the early renaissance in Europe, Charney underscored the necessity of reconciling multiple human agencies with diverse and sometimes contradictory legacies into courses striving to impart a world architectural narrative.
Charney also serves on the Education Committee of the College Art Association in which he works on initiatives related to assessment and the scholarship of teaching and learning as applied to instruction in the visual arts.