(IN)TANGIBLE HERITAGE(S)

Abstract

This talk addresses four approaches to teaching and learning graphic design histories within an art and design program structure. These approaches include: 1) chronological with thematic/focus clustering, 2) through the lens of technological innovation in communications, 3) as a cultural studies emphasizing alignments between literary, political, and art movements, and 4) node-based research workshop wherein no one student learns the same design history and all engage in each other’s discoveries in an inquiry-based learning space. This research connects these teaching strategies with the role of the digital humanities in design historical pedagogy. As I teach this material in my department, the role of digital, LED-lit, ever-present screen is a part of a shift in the way one can view, understand and ask questions about images. Our questions, especially for our younger students, are changing because of the screen as a part of our collective vision. It is not simply s shift in the technologies and cultures around us. The screen is changing what we see in design histories, so the importance of physical spaces, buildings and archives is critical to incorporate in the ideas of the virtual, the physical, the real and the actual the traces of what came before this time.