William Kaizen

At first I was afraid that I'd loathe the class because it seemed like Prof. Kaizen (or Bill) was a jaded grad student in his eighth year who really didn't give a hoot about teaching a bunch of kids basic Art History. And when the course ended I still believed that he didn't really care too much. But I got a heck of a lot out of the class and actually enjoyed Kaizen as an instructor. First off, the reading was really light. Really, really light - no more than 10 pages per class, if that. And he "tweaked" the syllabus - instead of doing everything chronologically we did Architecture, followed by Sculpture (both covered on the midterm) and then Painting (which made up the final). Teaching the class conceptually was a great idea and really helped me understand changes in Art History and recall different artistic mediums even when we went from Architecture to Painting. Since he's a seasoned modern art student, we cut a lot of the older works (especially during painting) and spent a lot of time on the more modern artists. For example, we skipped Michelangelo & Bruegel in the Painting section, but spent 2 days on Warhol and a day on Sherman (not commonly on the ArtHum syllabus). If a Music Hum prof tried pulling that and adding lots of Crumb and Schoenberg to the syllabus while deleting Beethoven I'd be pissed, but for ArtHum it worked well - probably because people had great commen…

Bill is very strict about attendance and lateness. However, his reading assignments were so light!!! You have to do them for the midterm and final but they are so short that you cannot complain. The material he chose was pretty interesting (a lot of Andy Warhol and Cindy Sherman- Michelangelo got cut) but you better be ready to participate in class. If you don't volunteer he WILL call on you. If you give the wrong answer he might shut you down pretty harshly, but in the end everyone gets cut down everyonce in a while. Its shocking at first but you get over it. Overall, I didn't find him very painful.

At first I was afraid of Kaizen. He is a well-seasoned grad student in the Art History department (he's been there somewhere between 6-8 years), told us that he was defending his dissertation really soon, and I had the first impression that he was just going to be one of those "I hate teaching this because I have to and I don't care about this class at all." Having had my fair share of apathetic grad students in Core classes, I didn't expect much. However, Kaizen used his past teaching experience and knowledge to actually make the class palatable. Sure, he wasn't super enthusiastic about papers (like us writing about St John the Divine vs. St Paul's chapel), and the readings were much less than any other Art Hum section (which I really didn't mind), but he actually was really really interesting. Instead of having a chronological mish-mosh of artistic works, we did architecture, then sculpture, then painting. He also tailored the syllabus to his areas of expertise (modern painting). We skipped artists like Bruegel and Rembrandt but spent a lot of time on Picasso, Pollock, Warhol & Sherman. I think this was good because people in the class were more insightful about the modern works. I think that the class was good - definitely the best Core class I took and I had NO art history background. Kaizen may not be the most approachable person (though he will meet with you outside of c…

Good instructor. Always required the participation of everyone in the class but was never intimidating about it. Had an attendance policy like every other instructor, and had assigned reading, which wasn't too long, for every class. Graded a little bit harder than I expected but I don't think many people got below a B. I would recommend him.

very light reading for most classes, 2 essays (5 pages each), midterm, final... quite a bit lighter than many other sections. make sure to come to class on time - if you are late and miss attendance you'll be marked as absent.

Two 5 page comparison papers, a midterm and a final. Light readings.

2 papers (5 pgs each) - first one compared the Cathedral of St John the Divine to St Paul's chapel OR The Thinker to Alma Mater. Second paper was a formal analysis of 2-4 paintings at the Met. Midterm, Final (our Final was take home b/c of the strike). Midterm was a few term IDs, some slide analyses, and then comparative essays. Final would have been that way if it hadn't been take home (non-cumulative). Really light readings. Grade breakdown: 20% for each paper, 20% for each exam, 20% participation. +4 absences = your grade lowered by a full letter.

Not heavy: reading assignments, two or three essays, midterm and final, which weren't too painful.