TCNJ

37 WINTER 2021 boundaries of expression. "It gives the idea like I had when I was an under- grad that we only study Western art because that's all that exists, rather than that was a conscious choice made by people," she says. of broadness beyond us, beyond my language, beyond my culture, beyond my geographical boundaries, beyond my beliefs and practices," he says. "A better understanding of self and other in the world can lead to better commu- nication for everybody." Deborah Hutton Bringing art out of the corners Deborah Hutton embarked on equity work when she arrived in 2004 as TCNJ's first tenure-track art history professor whose specialty was not in European or American art. She demurred when she was asked to teach a survey class in Non-Western Art. "I'm not going to teach a class called 'Non-Western Art,' because that's defined by what it is not rather than what it is," she says. Her own undergraduate education had been similarly blinkered: Art history was a well-worn path through Western culture that led from the Parthenon to Picasso. "Western art takes center stage, organized by time," she says, "and the rest of the world is organized by geography in the corners." At TCNJ she created her own curriculum of classes in South Asian, Islamic, and East Asian art. "I got very interested in this idea of global art history," she says. "It led me to think about teaching differently. Why can't we take a specific time period and look at it globally?" To teach about the 16th century and not venture too far beyond the Sistine Chapel, or to see the 20th century through the lens of Jackson Pollock, is to ignore the ways that artists in the rest of the world were expanding the language of beauty and extending the How can we make art history less racist? imperialism, art history has long ide- alized the art of Western Europe and White North America at the expense of art of other cultures," the book's introduction reads, emphasizing that it will instead examine "the meaning and significance of art from all six inhabited continents and their many cultures." Hutton has also introduced a new seminar that explored those deeper issues of racism and Eurocentrism in art history. "How can we make art history less racist?" she asks. "I don't care if my students memorize a canon of objects that they can recognize when they go to a museum. I see what I do as making them global citizens and getting them to see the world in a new way that maybe goes beyond the way certain cultures are presented within our culture." Wendy Clement, Tracy Kress, and Donald Lovett Brainstorming biology's bias Even the sciences — built though they are on empirical data, on masses of facts discovered across generations — are not immune from bias. "Initially people would say, 'Well what can you possibly do in the sci- ences about racism?' and that's what we may have thought initially, too," says biology professor Donald Lovett. He and other faculty in the biology department "brainstormed ideas on how to be more explicit in pointing out biases and misunderstandings," he says. A failure to acknowledge the sci- entific contributions of women and people of color; the shameful legacy of eugenics; false notions about race; The conscious choice she made was to introduce students to art from cultures they might have previously encountered only from other, narrow- er angles. "Which cultures are cele- brated in art history, music, philoso- phy, and literature classes and which cultures are only taught in classes like terrorism or religious studies?" asks Hutton, who started teaching Islamic art in the year of 9/11. "What's it like to be a student who has a connection to that culture and only sees that culture presented one way? That's something that really shaped my entire teaching career, but I only get more adamant about it over time." As recipient of the Gitenstein-Hart sabbatical prize for faculty research, Hutton spent a year as part of a large team of authors working to rewrite the narrative of art history. Her global perspective will gain a wider audience this year with the publication of the textbook — "the first major art history survey textbook written in the 21st century," according to the publisher — of which she is a co-lead author: The History of Art: A Global View. "With its own history rooted in European

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