2026 Theses Doctoral

Storied Canons: An Examination of the Experiences and Pedagogical Practices of Undergraduate Survey of Art History Instructors

Montana, Allyson

This qualitative study examined how art history survey instructors understand and navigate their pedagogical choices within a course historically shaped by Western canons, colonial frameworks, and exclusionary narratives. Drawing on in-depth interviews with seven instructors teaching undergraduate art history survey courses, the study explored how their life histories, cultural backgrounds, disciplinary training, and institutional contexts influence the ways they construct the course and support student meaning-making.

Guided by postcolonial theory and narrative inquiry, this research considered how instructors negotiate tensions between tradition and revision, coverage and depth, and canon and critique. It also examined how pedagogical decisions are shaped in relation to students’ cultural and educational backgrounds, institutional structures, and broader social and political forces that position the survey within changing expectations for higher education. Rather than treating the survey as a neutral transmission of established knowledge, participants described it as an interpretive space shaped by values, constraints, lived experience, and classroom relationships.

The analysis identified three interconnected themes: personal as pedagogical, meaning making, and responsiveness. Together, these themes illuminated how instructor identity, interpretive practice, and relational awareness shaped the teaching of the art history survey. Findings suggested that the survey functions not as a fixed body of content but as a dynamic site of negotiation where instructors actively shape the stories that are told and the frameworks through which students encounter them.

This study contributes to conversations about curriculum, authority, and equity in art history education by demonstrating how instructor identity, classroom relationships, and institutional conditions shape the pedagogical possibilities of the survey course.