Why I Teach: Dr. Michael Anthony Fowler
Why I Teach: Dr. Michael Anthony Fowler
This episode features Dr. Michael Anthony Fowler, Assistant Professor of Art History in the Department of Art and Design. In addition to his work in the classroom, Dr. Fowler is an active collaborator on several international archeological projects and serves as the chair of Johnson City’s Public Art Committee. In this episode, he shares how these experiences impact his teaching, as well as some interesting observations and insights about incorporating hands-on learning and interdisciplinary approaches in his classes.
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Transcript
Dr. Michael Anthony Fowler
I want to create culturally fluent, persuasive, compelling communicators; people with
keen eyes who can be discerning; folks who are inquisitive, who value truth, and know
how to identify right to make that distinction between fact and fiction.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle
Hi. I'm Kimberly McCorkle, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs
at East Tennessee State University. From the moment I arrived on this campus, I have
been inspired by our faculty, their passion for what they do, their belief in the
power of higher education, and the way they are transforming the lives of their students.
This podcast is dedicated to them, our incredible faculty at ETSU. Hear their stories
as they tell us “Why I Teach.”
In this episode, we will talk with Dr. Michael Anthony Fowler. Dr. Fowler is an Assistant Professor of Art History in the Department of Art and Design. He also serves as affiliate faculty in the Classical and Medieval Studies, Religious Studies, and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies programs.
An art historian and classical archeologist, Dr. Fowler specializes in the art and material culture of the ancient Mediterranean and West Asia. He has earned master's degrees in several disciplines, including a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard University, an M.A. in classical archeology from Tufts University, and a Master of Arts and Master of Philosophy from Columbia University. He also completed his Ph.D. in art history and archeology from Columbia.
In his teaching, which ranges widely across the history of art, Dr. Fowler is interested in introducing students to the diversity of visual cultures around the globe, and to the critical role that arts continue to play in expressing, shaping, and responding to peoples’ ideals and realities.
Dr. Fowler is also an active collaborator on several international archeological projects. Locally, he is a commissioned member and chair of Johnson City's Public Art Committee, where he assists people with various projects aimed at integrating art into the everyday lives of people in this region, beautifying ETSU’s hometown, and building community through collaboration.
Enjoy the show!
Dr. Fowler, welcome to the show. I start my podcast with the same question for every guest. Take me back to your first day of teaching at ETSU as a faculty member. And looking back on that day, what is one piece of advice that you would have given yourself?
Dr. Michael Anthony Fowler
It's a wonderful question to begin with. And but first, let me just thank you for
the invitation to join you today on the podcast. I'm really glad to be here. The piece
of advice I would give myself on my first day is actually a piece of advice I would
give myself every day of my career to the present and beyond, and that is never to
forget how that first day on the job feels. The excitement of introducing new material
to students who've never encountered it before, and making sure that enthusiasm and
excitement carries over into your fifth, 10th, 15th, 20th year. Because my students
respond to that enthusiasm and energy. They see my passion for the subject and it
inspires them to want to learn more. And I would say another thing is that a lot of
us teach the same courses, you know, several times over our careers, and it can feel
a little routine and you can fall into losing that excitement. So trying to maintain
that fresh perspective on the material every time you walk in the classroom really
helps. And it also helps you remind yourself that, what it's like to learn the material
for the first time and making sure you're scaffolding and approaching material from
the perspective of a first-time learner in the discipline that we never as experts,
lose the novice perspective. So I think that applies equally to my first day on the
job, as it does on my current and future days on the job.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle
Excellent. Excellent advice. What initially drew you to the fields of art history
and archeology and how did your academic journey evolve across different disciplines
like philosophy, religious studies, and classical archeology?
Dr. Michael Anthony Fowler
So, I was ultimately, I mean, I arrived at art history and archeology fairly circuitously
and late in my academic training. What ultimately drew me to art history and archeology
are the kinds of questions that are possible to answer from an art historical, and
archeological perspective. Art history preserves. Visual art is humanity’s oldest
form of communication that survives. Of course, human beings, our earliest ancestors,
tens of thousands of years ago, had other forms of communication: dance, music, language.
But art is the most enduring form of that communication that crosses through time,
crosses geographic cultural boundaries, and it's nonlinguistic. So it's a really inclusive
way of studying those ideals and realities of humanity throughout history in a way
that doesn't privilege cultures, that, leave text for, for instance, not every culture
is a literate culture. So, if we want to be inclusive and then most, in the broadest
sense, to study human beings through our history, I'm really drawn to art is that,
that form of communication. And archeology preserves all kinds of information in the
archeological record that doesn't necessarily privilege the elites, who on the art
historical side, on the literary side, a lot of what our students encounter are things
made by and for the more privileged groups throughout human history, and archeology
preserves a lot of evidence that permits us to investigate classes of people, groups
of people who might otherwise have been, unacknowledged or more difficult to identify
in the more elite forms of material culture.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle
Oh, thank you for sharing that. I understand that you co-designed a study abroad course
in Greece that combines art history, design, and cultural heritage management. How
do you think that experiential learning in a real-world setting changes the way that
students understand and engage with art history?
Dr. Michael Anthony Fowler
Fowler: So traditionally, when I went through my art historical training, art history
has this rap for being relatively passive, sitting in very dim, dark rooms with slides
being projected. And why I liked getting students out abroad in Greece is partly that
it reminds students that art and architecture are contextual, that they're embedded
in spaces and cultural context, and getting them to actually move around and within
these different spaces and actually get a first-hand experience of how actually art
and architecture, archeology, is part of the lived experience of people. But also
the class was designed around concrete case studies that were presenting not just
mock problems for students to solve, but these are actual problems that still confront
the fields of cultural heritage and museum studies as it concerns how do we make our
sites, our museums, our monuments more accessible in the sense of physically accessible,
accessible to different kinds of bodies, but also accessible, I mean, I should say
inclusive in the sense of, what stories are they telling? What kinds of meaning might
these different collections, might these different buildings have for folks? So it's
enlisting students in making art history and archeology, architectural history, more
accessible, more inclusive, but with those real-world problems that they're solving,
it's also reminding them that, like, art history is all around them and that these
fields have really concrete skills that they can actually apply in the real world,
and it reminds them that actually art history is this big, broad field, and there's
actually a lot of opportunity on the horizon for them.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle
In addition to Greece, have you taken students to other cities, even cities in the
U.S.?
Dr. Michael Anthony Fowler
I do make a habit of taking students on field trips to all kinds of museums where
I can get -- usually I do really long drives to museums within five, six hours of
the campus. So we've been to museums in Southwest Virginia, Middle Tennessee, North
Carolina. We have a trip coming up soon to Atlanta to go to the Carlos Museum. So
that's also part of this, getting students in proximity to art. Right? So that's not
represented flat with pixels on a screen, but actually being in a space where you
get a sense of the magnitude of an object, you get a sense of the way that that object
aesthetically impacts you. But, why I like the study abroad, is that there can be
that tactile, kinetic kind of spatial dimension that museums, for as much as I love
them for preserving and presenting objects from all around the world in a convenient
place, there's really nothing that replaces environments where you're actually moving
within and interacting in ways that more approximates the ways in which art historical
objects were actually used and experienced through history.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle
So you use other creative teaching methods like student exhibitions and problem-solving
in art and design. What advice do you have for faculty who are looking to bring more
hands-on learning and interdisciplinary approaches into their own classrooms?
Dr. Michael Anthony Fowler
So I'll start with the hands-on learning. And I would say to start small or that it
doesn’t have to be big, right? So, your question referenced my mounting of a collaborative
class exhibition at the William King Museum, which, of course, is a really large project
that required a year out of planning, a lot of scaffolding, a lot of different stages.
But that’s, of course, a really highly visible and impactful way of getting students
to experiment and apply their knowledge. And of course, gets actually a CV line and
exposure for their work out of the process. It doesn’t have to be that big. It can
be small, right, projects, experiments, hands-on exercises that you integrate into
the classroom. For instance, I have small-scale museum reproductions of objects that
I will occasionally incorporate into the classroom for people to handle and pass around
because, again, I spoke about the tactility, the sense of scale, the sense of weight,
and it’s different to interact with an object like that and answer questions about
it when it’s not this out-scaled, enormous, digitized thing on a screen, so that’s
an example of something that’s small that can make an impact. And I would say also
to make time for hands-on learning. It’s going -- to do it well, it requires some
of your time in your lesson plan, and a lot of us came up pedagogically being trained
that content delivery is so important, but skill development and opportunities for
application and knowledge transfer are also important, too, and so you have to take
time if you’re going to plan a bigger project, but you also have to create time in
your lesson plan and be okay with the idea that maybe you’re going to deliver a little
bit less content, but the payoff is that the students are probably going to retain
the knowledge better when they have a tactile, hands-on way of actually learning the
material.
As far as the interdisciplinary approaches are concerned, a lot of folks, myself included, although I did have a really interdisciplinary background, which you referenced, earlier in the podcast, but a lot of folks come up through their training, graduate school, where we get increasingly narrow in and specialize in a field and in some cases even a subfield or subdiscipline thereof, and so being interdisciplinary can be daunting, challenging, scary, for professors, for instructors who are trying to incorporate material, theories, methods from areas that they were not necessarily trained in. So it’s, it can be -- so part of is the advice is, is to take that courageous leap to incorporate, interdisciplinary training, knowing that it’s going to take some time to get familiar with some of those materials. You’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to need to iterate, through that and to decide what kinds of materials work best, but also, we’re blessed for being in a university that has so many different departments with those areas of expertise, and I have leveraged the knowledge and expertise of colleagues in social sciences and humanities for advice on what readings might be relevant or cognate or complementary to the goals that I have from the art, historical or archeological perspective. So, also draw upon the expertise of your colleagues.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle
Those are such good tips. It's true. In your bio, I read that you're an active collaborator
on several international archaeological projects, and you also serve as the chair
of the local Public Arts Committee. How does this work outside the classroom impact
your teaching?
Dr. Michael Anthony Fowler
So for the archaeological one, I'll point out briefly that I have encouraged students
who are interested in hands-on training in the field to accompany me to Greece, and
in fact, I have taken a student in a recent summer using an undergraduate research
grant that she won to accompany me to Greece to actually get that kind of training
that you just -- you can teach archaeological theory, you can teach archaeological
method, but you can't really understand the process of actually excavating and how
archaeologists approach studying a site unless you're actually on the site. So I do
try to get students who are interested abroad with me, whether it's in the context
of the course that we already discussed or even in those more personalized internship
capacities.
As far as public art is concerned, we -- public art has two different ways of actually putting art in public space. One of them is our own sponsored programs that we identify, we plan and develop and execute, and the other are community-initiated projects, where any individual or group, constituency in the community can come to the Public Art Community Committee and present an idea that they have, and we can either consult them and help them along independently, or it could be something that we adopt and we actually shepherd along.
So in one of my classes "The Monument in History," the students are tasked -- their project is to design a monument to a person, a cause, or an idea to be set up in a particular context, and they have to go through several stages of the project where they're doing the research, they're doing the design, they're making considerations about the different kinds of constituencies in the community that might be interacting with the monument, and they have to present it to the class at the end of the semester and be questioned.
So in some ways, the project and the monument in history, even though we're not really doing monuments in the public art realm, we tend to steer away from that for a variety of reasons, but that process of getting students in a class to practice what a proposal development for a public-facing object would actually be like. So it's simulating, again, that process and by then they've gone through a lot of theoretical readings about the various dimensions of monuments, the various pitfalls, problems, opportunities of monuments in history, and so they're applying all of that knowledge, and really, I can see them thinking critically about all of the various ways that actually putting something in public space is a really gratifying but challenging task if you're really doing it sensitively, inclusively, thoughtfully.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle
So, what's your favorite class to teach?
Dr. Michael Anthony Fowler
I would say usually I joke and say all of them, because one of the things that my
job is required here, being one of a cohort of three art historians, is being a generalist,
which of course kind of resonates with my previous discussion about interdisciplinarity,
is that I came here as an expert in ancient Greek and West Asian art, and in archaeology,
but I teach everything from prehistory to 1750 roughly, and all around the world,
and I've had to acquire that facility. So, through that process, I really learned
to love and appreciate the various classes that I teach, but I will say I do have
a soft spot for thematic classes, classes that take a concept or a phenomenon in human
history, like monument building, which cuts across time and space. I teach a class
on violence in the visual arts -- violence, another human phenomenon that has been
with our species for a very, very long time, and is where we have violent media all
over the place, so it allows me to approach an important issue or theme using case
studies from a variety of historical and cultural contexts, so it gets students to
think about an idea of ways in which cultures and contexts relate to one another,
but also developing an appreciation for understanding, appreciating diversity is not
just about finding similarity. It's also being comfortable with and appreciating and
embracing differences. Right, so distinctions are also important in comparative method.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle
How has your teaching style evolved over time and what continues to inspire you in
the classroom today?
Dr. Michael Anthony Fowler
I would say my teaching style has pretty much remained constant. I tend to be, I don't
have the "sage on the stage" approach, even in a lecture format class. I make time
for questions, discussions, breakouts, activities of different kinds. I would say
my teaching has evolved a lot with respect to content and assessment. Content, although
I still teach these very conventional art historical organizations of time into periods
or to geographic or cultural context, I just referenced the thematic classes that
I really like teaching, and part of why I like teaching them is it's pushing back
and breaking out of the mold of a particular way of approaching art history, where
we put these boundaries and silos around different people and their art and their
architecture, and it creates these kind of arbitrary divisions, when in reality, the
world, even in the ancient world, is a globalized, interconnected place where cultures
are mutually influencing one another through a variety of contacts.
So these thematic classes allow us to embrace the permeability of those kinds of taxonomic boundaries that get set up in the discipline and enable us to think on a kind of anthropological, more human level about issues that I think my students are also thinking about. Right. We're in a time where we're debating as a society what kinds of monuments should represent us, what monuments may be out-of-date and need to be revisited. Violence, right, is something we're living right in a world where we've got a lot of conflict happening around the world. So, students are really drawn to those issues and getting them to think about how humanity has dealt with, has explored those over time is really helpful.
Assessment-wise, I've moved away from the traditional research essay. That is not to say that I don't incorporate research and scholarly writing into my assignments. I still think that is a critical skill that students need to develop here. But I don't think a lot of my students are necessarily going to exit the university in careers or jobs where that's going to be the primary form of the product that they're going to produce. So I've referenced the exhibitions, the monument designs. I have students curate exhibitions. Next semester when I teach "Art in Appalachia," we're going to be in the Reece Museum, making use of the teaching collection, but also engaging in training on how to how to actually catalog, photograph, examine objects from a curatorial perspective. So I try to use those writing and research skills, but to channel them towards a variety of activities that represent things that different career tracks actually require. So they do, can actually speak to a job interview and say, "Actually, in one of my classes, I've done cataloging," or "I've actually mocked -- created a mock exhibition on a topic," right?
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle
I'm certain students find those relevant and also helpful.
Dr. Michael Anthony Fowler
Yeah, I -- the feedback I get suggest that's the case.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle
That's great. Finally, what impact do you hope you've made on your students?
Dr. Michael Anthony Fowler
I hope, I mean, I would say I'm a first-generation student, came from a, you know,
working middle-class family, and so I see a lot of my own background and experience
in the students that I have in the classroom. And so that really is one of the major
draws to higher ed for me is how transformative it can be for folks. So the impact
I really hope that I can help students get to where they want to be, right, and to
approach my teaching and mentorship in a personalized, individualized way so that
it's not a kind of one-size-fits-all. Yeah. On a broader-scale impact, I want students
-- I want to create culturally fluent, persuasive, compelling communicators; people
with keen eyes who can be discerning; folks who are inquisitive, who value truth,
and know how to identify, right, to make that distinction between fact and fiction.
And I think these are really important not only for being an active and productive
contributor to and member of a 21st century workforce, but it's critically important
to promoting institutions and values in a democratic society. So I'd say good citizens
is also something I hope I'm helping impact.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle
Nice. Thank you, Dr. Fowler. I've really enjoyed learning about the scope of what
you do, the ways that you've developed your teaching craft, and how your work impacts
your teaching and your students. Thank you so much for your contributions at ETSU,
and also to our community for your work with the Johnson City Public Art Committee.
Thanks for listening to “Why I Teach.” For more information about Dr. Fowler, the
Department of Art and Design, or this podcast series, visit the ETSU Provost website
at ETSU dot edu slash provost. You can follow me on social media at ETSUProvost. And,
if you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to like and subscribe to “Why I
Teach” wherever you listen to podcasts.
East Tennessee State University was founded in 1911 with a singular mission: to improve the quality of life for people in the region and beyond. Through its world-class health sciences programs and interprofessional approach to health care education, ETSU is a highly respected leader in rural health research and practices. The university also boasts nationally ranked programs in the arts, technology, computing, and media studies. ETSU serves approximately 14,000 students each year and is ranked among the top 10 percent of colleges in the nation for students graduating with the least amount of debt.
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