Dear Research Diary,

Today in class Ilaira Gianni came to speak about her research experience and give us advice on ours. It all seemed very interesting, exploring Bauhaus through theatre, and nostalgia in contemporary art. I have already spoken to her about my project and she has given me some useful information.

I was a little bit disturbed in class because conversation always draws towards the difficulties of writing about contemporary art. Because writing about your own time is more theoretically risky than writing about past eras. I don’t understand why this has come up so many times. I did not choose my topic at random because I thought that writing about contemporary art would be “cool,” in fact Arte Povera is not even that contemporary, it’s 40 years ago not 2.

I picked the topic because I truly believe that I am best prepared and most interested in this topic. In class we have told everyone about the progress in our research but nobody has ever really asked why we chose them. I think if you take into account that I am an Art History major, a Philosphy minor, and an Italian Studies minor, it makes perfect sense to do this topic. I would feel completely unprepared to do a Renaissance, Medieval, or Ancient topic considering I have taken two renaissance classes, no medieval, and one on Ancient Greek art. On the other hand, I have taken Contemporary, Curating, Modern, Methods, and not to mention Modern Italian History, Italian Politics, Italian Cinema, Modern Philosophy. I have been writing reviews of contemporary art shows in Rome for a year and a half. Just because one person said JCU students aren’t qualified to write contemporary  theses, all that means is that they made a generalization about our art histories and made a judgment but didn’t bother to take into account our individual interests and fortes. It might seem hard to believe that a 20 year old student knows a lot about modern and contemporary philosophy, but I love it and I read it for fun, I know absolutely nothing about the bible.

I was very disturbed by this. But I understand why people would be concerned.