Author: Eliya Ribak
When asked to observe and interpret material culture or music, students are often at a disadvantage, which is why I emphasize material culture interpretation in my Cultural Foundations course. It is necessary first to go beyond the description of the object/s and this, of course, is true for texts as well as music and material culture. But I find that it is harder for students to move beyond description when dealing with non-verbal texts. It is as if, once they have given words to the wordless, they feel they have already analyzed it. To illustrate the process I use to encourage students to start thinking analytically about objects/architecture, I take students to see a medieval miqve (ritual bath), found in the City of London. Most students have no idea what it is, which is good! I want them to use visual cues to try to figure out what this artifact is and what it says about the community that produced it. Once students are used to this type of analysis in class, they can start reproducing it on their own in writing.
I broadly use two ways to challenge students to write about music and material culture:
The first is Journals. Journals can be based on museum visits, site visits, classes, independent experiences, musical pieces, or even reading. But a journal by its very nature is descriptive, so it is usually necessary to pose questions to students in order to direct them towards more analytical writing.
I do this in two main ways: I use worksheets in museums to direct students to write in response to their experiences, visual stimulus, and my questions. The following is one of the questions I use in a gallery exercise sheet in the Egyptian Gallery:
| What materials are used in the objects in this gallery? Why these and not others? What does it tell you about the geography and environment of Egypt? What does it tell you about Egyptian society and people? |
Students are encouraged to write about the contents of the galleries as cultural products rather than stand-alone sculptures.
In another type of question, I ask students to compare any particular ancient object, building, or music to its modern counterpart. Comparative work provides a very good basis for writing:
| Compare a Greek vessel of your choice to a contemporary soft drink can of your choice.
What do the similarities and differences tell you about the Ancient Greeks and ourselves? |
The answers to these types of questions are often very successful, as students find it easier to talk about their own culture, which facilitates comparison to another.
Written answers to these worksheets can form a journal of their museum/site visits and are very useful as a set of notes. Alternatively, they can be turned into a blog using links to electronic resources and images. The blog or a more conventional journal can function as a graded or ungraded assignment. In my experience, this is a piece of writing students particularly enjoy. These notes also provide material to be used for studying for an exam or writing a formal essay.
This brings us to the second type of material culture writing I would like to discuss, the essay format. Here is an example of the types of essay questions I use:
| Choose any piece of architecture, music, art or artifact from Prehistoric to 7th century China.
Explain how this piece has helped you understand Chinese culture. |
This type of essay is very individualized and creative. It isn’t the formulaic type of essay they have mastered in high school. I also never have plagiarizing problems with this type of essay question, because students must argue for their own interpretation of the music or material culture.
It is also possible to use material culture writing in a broader format:
| Compare and contrast church, synagogue, and mosque architecture.
What do the similarities and differences tell you about their local and global relationships? |
This encourages student use of both their own observations as well as texts on architecture to construct an intercultural analysis. In this particular question, the evolution and development of the architecture and architectural elements allows students to trace the developments of the religious communities they are studying.
Dr. Kaku, a theoretical physicist, says that a huge chunk of our brain power is devoted to processing visual images. He says: “It’s by images, pictures, videos that we understand the universe.” Developing our students’ ability to analyze and write about material culture and music helps them develop their brain power.
Dr Ribak holds a PhD in Archaeology from the University of Reading, andis particularly interested in inter-communal and inter-religious relations, both through history and in the contemporary world.She has published a book on inter communal relations in Byzantine Palestina and papers on the architecture and art of religious structures in Byzantine Palestina, including the recent article ‘Archaeological Evidence from the Byzantine Holy Land on the Origins of the Iconoclastic Movement’ in the Journal of the British Archaeological Association. Her latest paper, which appears in CAPA Occasional Publications, considers the pedagogy of teaching about the Middle East and research into the consequences of the Muslim and Persian Invasions of Byzantine Palestina. Dr. Ribak is currently interested in the relations between Jews and Christians in Medieval Britain and is writing an article on Jewish Christian relations in Medieval London. She teaches Cultural Foundations I and II as well as Global Orientations: Britain in New York University, London. She also teaches archaeology and modern British race relations at the Open University and CAPA London.