Toward a Future for SoTL in Art History via Decoding the Disciplines

This is the first in a series of planned publications demonstrating intersections between Decoding the Disciplines and the still-emerging Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in Art History. To this end and as potential inspiration for others, this article presents personal and professional narratives along with “self-decoded” art history lessons. The narratives chart this emerging SoTL scholar’s attempt to reconcile conflicting identities on personal and professional, as well as procedural scales by mapping their individual lived experience as a first-generation, working-class student onto the broader “journey” narrative commonly applied to the transition from disciplinary research to interdisciplinary SoTL work, and extrapolating this to potential applications of the Decoding the Disciplines framework to the field of Art History. It also proposes a proof of concept aimed at establishing the Decoding the Disciplines paradigm as a central operating framework for future SoTL work in Art History by offering sample lessons on two essential competencies of the field, aesthetic description and visual analysis, as a call for Decoding’s use as a common language to coalesce ongoing, though disparate, efforts into purposeful collective action that has the potential to move the field into its next iteration. Altogether, the article aims to demonstrate that one can effectively decode not only their disciplinary expertise but also their own professional identity through conscientious, everyday classroom practice without necessarily engaging in a formal Decoding interview or complete immersion in SoTL literature. .