Dawn Delbanco

TLDR; Interesting material, low workload, awesomely smart professor, but very bad grading practices. I took this class as my global core elective to complement the Asian lit course I took. You definitely don't need to take an Asian lit but it helped a little bit with some of the artwork connected to literature. The material could either be very interesting or very boring, depends on how into pottery you are, which is half the class. Personally, I found Prof Delbanco very knowledgeable. She really knows what she is teaching, but sometimes this can cause problems. When talking about certain art pieces, it seems like I am not learning to analyze them on my own observations, but hers. When it came time to write an essay or take an exam, if you do not regurgitate the same interpretations as given in lecture as pure fact, you will lose lots of points. In this class, the world of asian art oddly becomes NOT open to interpretation, I was criticized on every single essay because the TA disagreed with my analysis. Making logical points and connecting the dots in your own analysis does not save you!! The TAs are HARSH graders, with very little to justify their grading. I handed in well-thought and polished essays that should have been As, but was given Bs. For a course that has easy and enjoyable material, it is made artificially difficult through intentionally low grades. The intention…

Art Hum with Dr. Delbanco was an incredibly worthwhile experience. Her teaching style is mostly lecturing, while encouraging frequent student participation. She led us on 2 trips to the Met and 1 trip to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. She is ABSOLUTELY brilliant, and her interpretations of certain pieces just blew my mind. I entered Art Hum with a pretty good basic knowledge of art, and was immediately humbled by the skill with which she was able to interpret. When I went to museums towards the end of the course, I was able to see things I never would have noticed before, and have a great newfound appreciation for the works. Prof Delbanco is very analytical, and is not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom. Although we did not cover as many works as some of the other sections, we really delved into the ones we did look at, and really built up skills of interpretation that can be applied to many pieces. She does expect a lot in the papers, although they are each fairly short. You have to be crystal clear in your interpretations, and not leave any major details out, so I'd definitely suggest meeting with her in office hours before each paper where she is incredibly helpful. Her exams are straightforward if you remember what she says in class and read her comments on your papers. This was a very enjoyable class.

I had some mixed emotions on this course. While Prof. Delbanco is very knowledgeable on the topics she chooses to cover (and many more, of course), and I really appreciated the perspectives on non-Western art, I'm not sure in the end whether the class was worth its troubles. But first, my minor issues with the course: - Expect a LECTURE course that focuses mostly on Chinese art with some relatively brief looks at Japanese (and even more rarely, Korean) art. If what you liked about Art Hum or other art history courses was the discussion, you won't really get much of that here. Any times students speak up in class is either to answer questions prof. Delbanco asks which are so obvious there's usually a good amount of awkward silence after them because no one wants to answer them, or when someone goes out of their way to ask a question to potentially analyze what we're seeing. In short, while you learn a lot, it's mostly through what she tells you and not what the class works together to find, which is what for hopefully many people, Art Hum was like. If you like to discuss things a bit more (specially when the class is in a dark room, usually early in the morning), then this may not be the ideal course. - She talks a LOT. Most of the class consisted of her droning on and on for the full 75 minutes (and as the semester unfolded, sometimes 5 or 10 extra minutes). This may not seem…

Professor Delbanco is the greatest! ever, hands down. This was my favorite class of the semester and probably favorite professor of all my semesters here. She isnt like all the other art hum teachers, where you learn slide after slide. For her class, you actually learn how to analyze art and you feel like you know so much more at the end of the course. I am so glad I had her, as my interest in art has greatly expanded. She is brilliant. Take this class if you care about learning how to view a painting intelligently. She is the best!

I had a generally positive experience with Dawn Delbanco. For starters, she is EXTREMELY knowledgeable in all facets of the class. The trade off is that her lectures are at times very dry and boring (I would rather watch paint dry) so it sometimes makes it hard to go to class. Despite her style of lecture, you still can get so much out of the class. Not taking Western Art seemingly put me at a disadvantage, but she is extremely clear on what is important and not so important. The material covered is mostly Chinese based with Delbanco, as we had another instructor come in who was more biased towards Japanese, but after hearing the other professor, it made me appreciate Dawn much more. Again to emphasize, she is extremely clear on what she is looking for and the important aspects of the material. Class set up is as follows. First half of the class is ceramics and statues. Second half is paintings. Ceramics is the least interesting of the topics but very straight forward and honestly very simple. Second half is more interesting but the level of difficulty is increased (as having to identify artist, painting title, country, and date as opposed to type of ceramic, country, and general period of creation) but it is completely doable. Overall, if you want a class where you do not need to do much outside reading or not to buy any textbooks, take Dawn's class, you will not regret it. S…

AMAZING. first of all - she doesn't teach art hum as a survey course - so don't worry about having to make the stacks of 200 flashcards that all your friends will. she teaches art hum as an in-depth discussion of several pieces (+/- 20: she spent two and half weeks discussing the coliseum) so if you want to be able to name every piece in the met, she isn't for you, but if you want to be able to really think carefully and speak intelligently about several masterpieces of art, then dawn's your prof. i didn't skip art hum once the entire semester - she's that good. very little bullshit, fair grader, interesting and very smart, extremely knowledgable. does look for comments in class.

The professor is very effective in presenting lectures that are organized and easy to follow. However, it seems at times she herself doesn't know the subject matter she is teaching and as if she hasn't seen some of the pictures before (e.g. she'll say oh I don't know what X is used for in the picture and ask the TA's if they do). The readings are useless, but the lectures are necessary if you want to be able to repeat the information back for midterms and papers. However, throughout the semester you'll get more and more disappointed with the class and feel the urge not to go to class because the information she presents is very vague and does not seem to be grounded in anything.

Prof Delbanco is a less than exciting lecturer but she has impressive knowledge. The papers were difficult to write because it was so hard to know what she wanted you to write. Criticisms usually were about points you had failed to make, rather than incorrect points you had made. The paper length was only four pages, yet when after the second paper she sent an email with what she would've considered a complete answer to the questions, her concise answer came to six and a half pages.

If you're thinking about taking this class for Global Core... DO IT! I took this class having not taken Art Hum and really enjoyed it. Professor Delbanco is extremely knowledgeable about the course material and can answer almost any question in a matter of seconds. She uses the words "orthogonal" and "counterbalance" a lot that even the TAs laughed at themselves at the end of the semester when they started saying it. She is extremely approachable and is willing to help a lot. DONT BOTHER BUYING THE BOOKS. The readings are never referenced... i repeat NEVER so don't waste your money. If you miss a lecture make sure to get notes from someone in your class because otherwise you might be a little lost. For the midterm and the final, there isn't that much historical memorization. She is much more concerned with you being able to critique art in an intelligent way than to memorize dates. Though this class is not exactly the easiest (the papers are graded pretty harshly), the TAs will definitely acknowledge you if you participate in the weekly section. If you miss one of the weekly sections/discussion groups (50 minutes every week), you have to write a one page paper about the lectures of that week.

Good lecturer. I think her specialty is in Asian art so her breadth of knowledge in art hum (all Western) was impressive. Her paper topics and exam questions were fair and related to what she discussed in class. Her grading was generous but a little strange. She can't make up her mind about grades and it is not unusual to receive a 'B+/A-' on a paper. On the first day of class she told us not to bother doing the reading. However, she gives suggested readings and her lectures usually draw from them so they are valuable if you didn't understand something or missed class. And she only made you know dates to the nearest century. She focuses more on the meaning of art studied than memorization. My only real complaint is that we spent so much time on the Parthenon that we missed a lot of topics that other sections covered.