About smARThistory's web-book
This web-booksite is being developed by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker as a dynamic enhancement (or even substitute) for the static traditional art history textbook. By using the strengths of podcasting, video, and other web 2.o technologies, we think we can better meet the needs of students, faculty, and the interested public.

Our colleagues, Shana Gallagher-Lindsay and David Drogin have also contributed.

Why we made this site
For years we have been dissatisfied with the large expensive art history textbook. We found that they were difficult for many students, contained too many images, and just were not all that engaging. In addition, we had found the web resources developed by publishers to be woefully uncreative.

We had both developed quite a bit of content for our online art history courses, and we have also created many podcasts, and a few screencasts for our smARThistory blog. So, it occurred to us, why not use the personal voice that we use when we teach online, along with the multimedia we had already created for our blog and for our courses, to create a more engaging "web-book" that could be used in conjunction with art history survey courses. We are also interested in joining the growing number of teachers who were making their content freely available on the web.

About the authors:
Dr. Beth Harris is the Director of Distance Learning and Associate Professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York. She is the editor of (and contributor to) Famine and Fashion: Needlewomen in the Nineteenth Century, London: Ashgate, 2005 and has taught art history at the college level for nearly twenty years. She has published numerous book reviews and is co-founder and co-chair of doodle, the SUNY organization for directors of online and distance learning environments and has presented numerous papers on topics in Victorian Studies and teaching with technology. Beth Harris received her Ph.D. from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
beth.harris@gmail.com

Dr. Steven Zucker is Dean of Graduate Studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York. Previously he chaired the art history department and and has taught since 1992. He co-organized, with Dr. Harris, two conferences directly concerned with the use of digital tools in the Humanities and co-authored “The Image Library as Learning Environment,” at the invitation of the College Art Association (CAA News, March 2005). He has worked at The Museum of Modern Art and published on Abstract Expressionism including his essay “Confrontations with Radical Evil: The Ambiguity of Myth and the Inadequacy of Representation," in Art History. In 2005, he received the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching. Steven Zucker received his Ph.D. from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
drszucker@gmail.com