Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

The Department of Art History has accelerated its discussions of how we can become a more welcoming and inclusive program, and how we can promote a more diverse art history both in our course curricula and in the pipeline of undergraduate majors and MA students that we graduate. For example, we redesigned our most popular introductory surveys to use Open Educational Resources rather than textbooks to lower the financial burden for students, and we changed our major requirements to include non-Western survey courses. Although we have a lot more work to do in these areas, we are also optimistic that we can continue to make progress towards Chancellor Mark Mone’s stated goal of making UWM a “radically welcoming and engaging institution.” Our departmental community includes people of color, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, first-generation college students, and others who have been historically excluded from the field of art history; and its research projects and programming seek to decolonize art history on multiple fronts. Our hope is that making these voices more visible to the wider community will help people of many different identities feel more welcome to join the department or to consider art history as a career. This public-facing space is a step in that direction.