The primary purpose of this dissertation is to identify, explicate, and clarify a range of genres, or subject-matter focuses, of art history to assist art educators in considering and planning art history components of art curricula. It is aimed at adding to the theoretical knowledge base of art history education – upon which curricular decisions are made, teachers are trained, educational practice is guided, and further research is conducted. In this study, literature in the fields of art history and art education is analyzed to correspondingly accomplish the following: to create portraits of art history based on art historians’ monologues and dialogues, and to review art educators’ depictions of art history in art education literature, specifically as published from 1980 through 1996 in Art Education , the journal of the National Art Education Association. Philosophical inquiry is the principal research methodology used to identify alternative perspectives, clarify ideas, and stimulate reflective thinking regarding art history and art history education.
In this doctoral study, a Conceptual Map of Genres of Art History is drawn to identify a diverse range of art historical scholarship. The reader is taken on an investigation of five broad areas of this scholarship through an analytical exploration of art history literature. The areas or zones of scholarship identified and explored in this odyssey alternatively focus on art maker, art object, context of creation, art audience, or have multiple focuses. Within these five zones of scholarship, nine specific regions of art historical studies, or genres of art history, are identified, investigated, and placed within the conceptual map: biographical art history and psych-based art history within the area that focuses on art maker; formalist art history and content-based art history within the area that focuses on art object; socio-cultural art history within the area that focuses on context of creation; response-based art history within the area that focuses on art audience; and artistic processes-based art history, feminist art history, and semiotics-bases art history within the area that contains scholarship that has multiple focuses. “Other” is identified as yet an additional category of genres of art history existing within the art history domain...