Asset Framing: Engaging Students in the Art History Classroom

In this podcast, Christina (Chris) Penn-Goetsch and Celia Stahr discuss how Trabian Shorters’s “asset framing” could be used as a model in the college art history classroom, providing numerous examples throughout their conversation. Asset framing is a narrative model that defines people by their gifts and assets instead of the challenges they may face. Shorters’s model for pedagogy may prove useful for the art history classroom, a space where we create narratives on a regular basis that probably affect our students more than the facts and research that we share. Shorters’s observations, based on the work of psychologist Daniel Kahneman, argues that we internalize what we see as part of a narrative before we even employ the conscious mind. This suggests an even more imperative role for how we study the visual arts. Celia Stahr, who received a BA and MA from San Francisco State University and a PhD from the University of Iowa, has been teaching art history at the University of San Francisco for 18 years. As an adjunct who was named one of the top professors in Fifteen Noteworthy Art Professors in San Francisco, Celia specializes in modern, contemporary, African, and transnational or “traveling” artists with an emphasis upon issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and class. Stahr is particularly interested in artists who cross cultural boundaries and the importance of place. Her book Frida in America: The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist was published in 2020 by St. Martin’s Press and has received many positive reviews in publications such as the New York Times, Art in America, and Publisher’s Weekly. Stahr is also interviewed in the forthcoming BBC three-part docuseries on the life and art of Frida Kahlo. Christina (Chris) Penn-Goetsch (They/She) finished their BA at the University of Virginia and a PhD at the University of Iowa. This professor has taught at Cornell College for 26 years now and was the recipient of Cornell’s Exemplary Teacher of the Year in 2018. They have had an active career in college service that includes serving as the chair of the college’s Diversity Committee and acting as advisor for Alliance and Gender Safe Space. Their main areas of research focus on early modern Italy and contemporary feminist art. Penn-Goetsch has taught for the Smithsonian Journeys program in Southern Italy and continues to offer college classes about architecture and imperialism in Rome, Italy. Their interest in asset framing stems from teaching classes in African, African American, Native American, Chicana, and Feminist art, as well as a new course last year, “Queer Eye for Art History.”