Newswise — Rather than assign a book to incoming first-year students to read before they arrive on campus, Wake Forest University has assigned a painting.
Wake Forest’s more than 1,200 first-year students will view and discuss Frederic Church’s 1855 painting, The Andes of Ecuador. The famous landscape painting is on display at Reynolda House Museum of American Art, adjacent to campus or nearby to campus. The museum, an affiliate of the university, is partnering with the university on the project. It is common practice for universities to assign summer reading as a way to get a head start on building intellectual and community connections. Wake Forest puts a new twist on the traditional assignment.
“In a way the summer reading project is a warm up or trial run for what happens in the more intense environment of the Wake Forest classroom,” said Perry Patterson, associate dean for academic advising at Wake Forest. “We are focused on looking at the work of art through many different academic perspectives.”
A website with videos, images and selected readings will help students engage with questions of science, politics and religion associated with the painting. Professors of art, biology, psychology, and economics share their views of the painting through the lens of their specific disciplines. Wake Forest President Nathan O. Hatch explains the religious context for the painting. Suggesting readings from Charles Darwin, Ralph Waldo Emerson and German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt are included for students to review.
“We are bombarded with images every day, and this generation is particularly media-savvy and media-saturated,” says Jennifer Raab, the Betsy Main Babcock Postdoctoral Curatorial and Teaching Fellow at Reynolda House, who helped develop the project. “It’s important to learn how to critique images and realize that we can’t accept them at face value. The basic tools for ‘reading’ the visual are similar if looking at a 19th century painting or a 21st century web-based advertisement.”
In the past Wake Forest has assigned essays, books and movies for the summer reading project, but this is the first time a work of art has been chosen.
The project concludes with a visit to the museum during new student orientation. On Sunday, Aug. 22, first-year students will tour the museum and see the painting in person before a dinner and discussion with their faculty and upperclass student advisers on the front lawn of Reynolda House.
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