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Research Guides@Tufts

HAA 0100: Theories & Methods: Home

 

Welcome to my Research Sources page for (HAA100) Theories and Methods
Critial Thinking and Writing in Art History

Chao Chen, your Art History Research Librarian
Email: chao.chen@tufts.edu; Tel: 617• 627• 2057

 chao chen  

Reading and WritingTips

Key Characteristics of a Scholarly Article

  • Author(s): scholars/researchers with credentials (e.g. PhD) and/or affiliations (e.g. university professor or similar knowledge-based organizations.)
  • (the intended) Audience: for their academic peers in the discipline/field.
  • Purpose: to further our understanding about a topic with original research, usually focusing in a narrow area of the subject (rather than to merely persuade, entertain, inform, or report.)
  • Peer-reviewed scholarly articles are vetted and improved by experts in the field before publication.
  •  Language: scholarly language with discipline specific vocabulary.
  • Structure: Relatively lengthy (at least 5 pages of text) with many citations and references to published research (footnotes and/or bibliography).

Reading Tips

A systematic approach in your reading helps you consider the article critically. A good critique is really more about your own confidence as a reader than about possession of specific knowledge. (Source: A Survival Guide for Art History Students.)

How to Read Journal Articles Like a Professor by Michael J. Nelson:

  • Reading for substance
  • Reading as a researcher
  • Reading as a writer

Writing Tips

The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:

  • Writing in art history
    This handout discusses a few common assignments found in art history courses; the handout highlights key strategies for approaching and analyzing visual materials.

A Sample Bibliographical Essay

Citation Style

Chicago Manual of Style

We cite sources to

  • Avoid plagiarism
  • Give credit to the source of an idea
  • Lend credibility to our arguments

And, we also cite sources to

  • Allow us, and others, to follow the trail back to a source
  • Bring diverse voices together in dialogue
  • Participate in a scholarly conversation, situating our own voice in that larger, ongoing academic discussion

Finding Books and Articles

Overviews and Bibliographies

  • This type of sources offer overviews and summaries; use them to gather, possibly, the following information:
    1. An art historian's contribution in the field of art history.

    * their "new" approach/method/theory
    * their "impact" on the scholarship of a particular type of art
    2. Seminal publications by and about an art historian (as mentioned in the essays and listed in the bibliographies)

    * note authors/scholars who are experts on the art historian or the theory
    * note major journals in the fields, where you are likely to find current scholarship on your topics.
    * Are there scholars/journals from other fields as well?
    3. People, events, ... related to an art historian

    * how an art historian is shaped by their education;
    * who or what influenced their theory;
    * what was the field of study like prior.

Finding Books    

Path of Discovery in JumboSearch, (our book catalog and more)

  1. Find a relevant book (e.g., from your assigned readings?)
  2. Note the descriptive language of the Catalog record.
  3. Use that language in further searches

e.g., Click on subjects in the record to see further results and related topics; and/or combine these subject phrases with other keywords for a more focused search:

Title: Decolonising the Museum: The Curation of Indigenous Contemporary Art in Brazil
Author: Pitman, Thea
Subjects: Art museums
  Art, Brazilian
  Latin American Studies
  Museology (Museum science)
  Art & Art History

Finding Journal Articles 

1. All Subjects

2. History of Art Databases

Tip: Crash the Research Party

Subject-specific databases such as Art & Architecture Source. is where art historians and scholars are having their research party, sharing with each other their scholarship. Throw art historians/artists/ their works that interest you into the database; then "listen to" the conversations about them: how scholars have studied them? If you don’t yet have specifics in mind, entering keywords of topical themes, and observe which art historians/artists/artworks are being associated with these topics, how and why?

3. Related Subject-Databases:

 

 

**For some very recent artists/artworks or less studied past figures, you might need to use newspapers/magazine; then, apply scholarship on related themes/genres in study these new or old cases.

Current Newspapers

Historical Magazines and Newspapers

**A complete list of newspapers, current and historical.