Xiaohan Du

I know that many people did incredibly poorly on our most recent essay. We’ve also had two trips to the Met so far this semester, each of them assigned in the days before the weekend so we weren’t able to combine the trips. This was especially challenging for me, as I’m disabled. I’m very worried about the effect this midterm will have on my grade and my overall GPA. Her assignments are incredibly challenging and time consuming, and the expectations for the midterm were deceptive. It’s deeply frustrating because this is a core requirement. These classes aren’t supposed to be like this. I didn’t have time to study for a midterm for a major requirement because of this class.

This is Art Hum section 5. The professor told a student who emailed for a group of us that we should memorize XYZ details for all of the pieces that are shown three times or more on the PowerPoint presentations, so that’s what we did. Otherwise, there would have been something like 80 art pieces to memorize, many of them nearly duplicates of each other. At least two of the pieces we had to identify and analyze on the midterm appeared only once in the power points and weren’t a central point of discussion. The instructions were clear in what we should study, but then the content of the exam went beyond that scope. Based on this alone, I know I’ve lost at least 20 of the 90 points on the exam because her instructions were wrong.

She tolerates no BS. Put in the work and you will be rewarded. She will make it known if she thinks you did not put in the effort.

Xiaohan was nothing but excellent in my experience. She is immensely knowledgable, passionate, and kind. She cares about teaching and her students. I've never had a professor go out of their way to learn about their students like she did. Her version of ArtHum was the best thing I could have asked for. She made efforts to decenter the Western focus of the course by bringing in her expertise in East Asian art. I appreciated it immensely. She feels more like an approachable, wise senior than a professor in the sense that she has a young spirit (flexible, generous, passionate) and makes an active effort to engage with her students as peers. She has instilled a new passion in me for art history and even teaching which is probably the highest praise I can offer her. I'd say that those who have negative feedback are more from students who did not want to put in a lot of effort into this core course, which is fair. Not everyone enjoys it and just wants to get it over with. But negative feedback on her specifically I don't think is fair. If you are a good student, she is an excellent professor in return.

Grading is very fair, though you do have to work for it. Assignments are reasonable for a 3-credit class and pretty fun. Projects/essay don't take too much time.

Prof Du makes art history very fun and approachable. We often went into interesting anecdotes, fun background information on artists/art periods, and much more. I genuinely improved my understanding of some Western History through the discussions/readings given in this class, from Columbia's neoclassical architecture to Protestantism and Florentine culture. Du also balances the western focus of the course with interesting East Asian art. She is well spoken, friendly, and clearly has a depth of knowledge about art history. Definitely a class to look forward to.

The assignments were manageable: 3 museum visit responses, 1 paper (3 or so pages), 1 project (a review of an art exhibition; took a significant amount of time including visiting the exhibition), a midterm, and a final project (presentation and written report of a proposed addition to the Art Hum curriculum). However, Professor Du is a harsh grader and does not provide adequate justification for her grades. In my opinion, professors owe their students an explanation of where they lost points on assignments. However, I received lower than an A on a couple of assignments, and the only feedback I got from Professor Du was something like "Good work." This arbitrary-seeming grading was super frustrating and made me dislike the class at times.

If you're interested in art or art history, you will find the lecture content of Art Hum with Professor Du reasonably interesting. However, this class took up much more of my time than I would have expected (or preferred) from a required class that was only 3 credits. We had to go on eight required museum visits throughout the semester (the MET, the MOMA, the Frick Madison, Butler Rare Book Manuscripts, Avery Archives, St. John's Cathedral, Low Library, and another exhibition of our choice). Each one of these visits took up a significant chunk of time, and only three of the eight happened during class hours. We were expected to go on our own time for the other five. I enjoy going to art museums and had fun on the visits, but this was much more time than I'd liked to have devoted to a 3-credit Core class during a busy semester.

Weekly/per-class discussion posts for participation grade. In-class midterm. One paper, one art exhibition project, a subsequent related project, and then a final presentation instead of a final. It sounds like a lot, but was actually very chill, and the grading was very kind.

One of the best professors I've had here. She teaches all required Core material, but also finds opportunities to introduce non-Western Art. There was an in-class midterm, but it was very fair and she graded it very gently. We had a couple projects, but there was the option to do something creative/lots of leeway. She was such a kind and engaging professor and takes a genuine interest in her students. If you get her for Arthum, you're lucky!