Makers: Women Artists in the Early Modern Courts of Europe

Makers: Women Artists in the Early Modern Courts of Europe is a new online resource in development at the University of Alabama in collaboration with the Alabama Digital Humanities Center (ADHC). The goal of the Makers Project is to encourage sustained, interdisciplinary consideration of the role early modern women played in the hands-on production of visual and material culture in the courts of Europe. The Makers Project Team is in the process of designing a web-based platform that will serve as an interactive digital lab for scholars, encouraging study, collaborative research, innovative approaches, and dissemination of information dedicated to this field. The peer-reviewed digital space will allow scholars to upload visual and textual resources – biographical, archival, and printed. It will also include a dynamic mapping tool designed to highlight the connections between objects, artists, patrons, and materials. The pilot project, initiated in Fall, 2015, involves a significant pedagogical component, representing collaboration between faculty, graduate students, and staff of the ADHC.

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ARTmap

ARTmap was created by Professor Jenny Tucker to be used in conjunction with the introductory level ARH 252/253 course work. The project covers the history of art from the Stone Age to the late 20th century. Each module provides a deeper look into key art works, establishes geographic context, and provides opportunity for discussion. The site is centered around an interactive map that links students to text, images, videos, and museum websites. ARTmap supplements the course curriculum by creating a more comprehensive understanding of the function of art in society past and present.

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ARH 373: The Small Treasures Project

In conjunction with the exhibition Small Treasures: Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, and their Contemporaries, on view at the Birmingham Museum of Art (BMA) from January 31- April 26, 2015, students enrolled in ARH 373 (Dr. Tanja Jones, Northern Baroque Art) at the University of Alabama are conducting research dedicated to the paintings in the exhibition. This project represents an opportunity for students to gain exposure to original works of art produced in Flanders and the United Provinces in the seventeenth century. It is part of an effort to enhance experiential learning beyond the walls of the lecture hall and involves tours of the exhibition facilitated by BMA curators and staff, research in University libraries, and the sharing of research findings via this website, designed by faculty and staff in the Alabama Digital Humanities Center (ADHC).

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Ancient Art

The ancient world was as interconnected and complex as our own. Over the millennia, new cultures and dynasties arose, expanded, and waned, affecting not only their regions of origin but the other civilizations and cultures with which they were in contact. Cultures traded, invaded, conquered, learned and appropriated from, rejected and embraced one another, and the materials, literature, art, religion, politics, and traditions of various ancient centers often resonate with traces of these forms of contact and conversation.   In Dr. April Jehan Morris’s ARH 000 course, her students explored various ancient cultures and their contact with and influence on one another. By examining the societies around and beyond the Mediterranean holistically, the class captured a view of what Polybius’ called “an organic whole” in which interconnection and innovation both played definitive roles in shaping the art, architecture, and cultural fabric of ancient societies.

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Alabama Architecture

Alabama Architecture is a descriptive digital database about historical buildings and structures in Alabama, from both the Tuscaloosa area and further afield. It was created by Art History students taking course ARH 376 led by Professor Rachel Stephens, who worked in partnership with the ADHC to enable her class to create an online resource which could be added to each year by future iterations of the course. Gradually the aim is to harness the power of service learning so that students can make lasting intellectual contributions visible not only to their peers and local academic community, but also the international audience of the World Wide Web.

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Art of the American South

Professor Rachel Stephens (Art History) partnered with the ADHC to allow her ARH 374 class to create a series of online exhibitions about various historical southern art topics. Each project on the site was researched, written, and curated by a student, and as new iterations of the course take place this digital resource documenting a wide variety of subjects in the history of southern art will grow, becoming a valuable point of reference for students and scholars in the field working nationally and internationally, as well as the general public.

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