Elaine DeBenedictis
In the Fall of 1992 I used multimedia to teach approximately one quarter of my survey course "Introduction to Art History I." For a private, predominantly undergraduate liberal arts college, multimedia proved to be superior to slides as a classroom medium for teaching art history from the point of view of pedagogy, ease of use, class preparation, classroom presentation, student response, and cost. Multimedia, however, fosters an approach to the study of art history that is different from the approach that slide technology encourages. Teaching art hsitory with multimedia raises several pedagogical and methodological questions that are fundamental to the teaching of art history at the undergraduate level. Multimedia raises issues about the nature of the visual translation of the work of art, and it requires us to rethink currently accepted modes of art historical analysis in the classroom.