Assistant Professor Kim Miller receives award for innovative teaching

Kim Miller, assistant professor of women's studies and art history, received the 2007 Aluka Award for Innovative Teaching. Aluka is an international, collaborative initiative that seeks to connect resources and scholars from around the world with Africa.

The award recognizes instructional use of Aluka's digital library to enrich teaching about or related to Africa. In Miller's course, African Visual Cultures, students used materials from the Aluka database to design, curate and write a critical biography of Africa related to the broad topic of art and liberation.

"Receiving the award is a real validation of my efforts as a teacher," said Miller. "It is meaningful because I am the only art historian and women's studies scholar to receive the award, and so I believe it is a validation of these two fields of study."

Miller's assignment utilized Aluka's documents related to African-led liberation struggles - archival materials, periodicals, oral histories, books, photographs, posters and ephemeral arts. Students worked in groups to create a virtual exhibition through a Web site or wiki.

Utilizing technology in the classroom has transformed Miller's teaching, she said. "As an art historian, visual material is at the core of what I teach. Over the past few years I've been making the switch from using slides to using digital images. Aluka has prompted me to integrate technology into the classroom to a much greater extent than I ever have before."

In addition, Miller said that digital databases such as Aluka have transformed the way she does research. "It basically allows me to research an extensive body of archival work from my office or my living room, whereas a few years ago I would have had to travel to South Africa and spend hours in various archives in different cities in order to get a comparable amount of work done."

Miller is one of six to receive the Aluka Award for Innovative Teaching worldwide.