I'm also an art history person (going for ye olde Ph.D.). It's frustrating for art history specialists (glad to see there are more of them out there in QB-world!) to have to deal with other players saying that (*perhaps* Cindy Sherman..there is some disagreement on this appearently) is 'too difficult' to ask about. The reasoning usually given comes down to 'I am relatively well-educated. I haven't heard of her before. Therefore, she is too difficult.' Well, imagine if the same test was used to determine if science questions were too difficult. What if the relevance and acceptability of science questions were determined by whether or not non-science specialists have heard of something. There would be a lot less stuff that ONLY scientists or people taking upper-level courses were able to get. Now I'm not advocating that...I think the canon should always be expanding, and I have no trouble not getting something that science people seem to think is relevant and important to ask about. I just wish art historians didn't have to deal with the hypocracy...say, someone thinking Cindy Sherman (just using her as the running example here) is too tough while some ultra-obscure-I-can't-even-remember-the-answer-because-it-seemed-so-di fficult physics topic gets by because of the ultra-orthodox hard-science lobby. I think hard science is fine as long as it's important and relevant to the field from a specialist's point of view. The same should be the case in all subjects, including art history. So, yeah, if you want to be hard, just be hard in a uniform and fair way...that's my $0.02. - Guy ....speaking for nobody except himself and Cindy Sherman.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:46 AM EST EST