As part of the ongoing discussion on the “Use of Digital Images,” Academic Commons will be publishing, over the next few months, a series of interviews with a small sample of those faculty who participated in the digital images project. In our selection of subjects, we have attempted to be as representative as possible of the different disciplines and approaches found in the project. Author David Green has returned to the interview subjects for updates and additional material. We encourage you to add your comments to the interviews and to the report.

Full Report:

Using Digital Images in Teaching and Learning: Perspectives from Liberal Arts Institutions

Interviews (more to come):

Robert Nelson (November 2006)
Robert Lehman Professor, History of Art, Yale University
Robert Nelson studies and teaches medieval art at Yale University. He came to Yale in 2005, after a long and distinguished career at the University of Chicago. It was there that he started teaching with digital images, and he has not looked back. He is co-curator of the exhibition Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai, on display at the Getty Museum through March 4, 2007.

Ann Burke (November 2006)
Associate Professor, Biology, Wesleyan University
Ann Burke teaches evolutionary and developmental biology at Wesleyan University. Her image-intensive classes now also use animations and she looks forward to using 3-D images in the near-future. In 2005, she developed, with the Wesleyan University Learning Object Studio, an animation of the Body Wall Formation of the Chick Embryo, which has provided a useful link between her teaching and research.

Hank Glassman (December 2006)
Assistant Professor, East Asian Studies, Haverford College
Hank Glassman teaches Buddhism, Religion and Gender, East Asian Religions, Japanese Literature, Language, and History. Images have become increasingly important in his teaching on Japanese language, history, and culture and in his research on Japanese religions in the medieval period. He constantly struggles with how best to display images in his classes and how to help students engage them as texts.

Henry Art (March 2007)
Professor, Biology/Environmental Science, Williams College
Henry Art, the Samuel Fessenden Clarke Professor of Biology at Williams College, has been a member of the faculty since 1970. He has taught courses in environmental studies, field botany, ecology and land use planning, through the biology department and the environmental studies program. His research includes long-term ecological studies of the Hopkins Memorial Forest. Innovative use of images has been key to both his teaching and research. In this interview, he is joined by Jonathan Leamon, a member of Williams’s Office for Instructional Technology.