It seems to be the notion that what collegiate quizbowl is is something of a more in depth expansion on the topics we learn in High School. Now the correspondence is certainly not 1:1. I don't believe many high schools teach psychology and sociology to the extent that we may be made aware of significant psychologists and sociologists beyond those briefly mentioned due to some stellar contribution. Beyond that probably nothing more is taught and probably any additional knowledge gained regarding those topics may be due to a priori interest. I of course hesitate to make this statement given that high schools are always adopting new curriculum and I'm already anticipating a reply to this post from a player who will state that he or she had a year of psych in high school. Nevertheless, the so called big 3 (I think it's 3) of History, Literature and Science (with its subgroupings) are definitely part of any high school curriculum and in the collegiate quiz bowl environment the demands on what a player is to know is much greater. The most exposure I had to art history, especially that which we would consider canonical came through my AP European History course and my teacher deeming it necessary to show us art slides. Little did I know that it would be helpful in collegiate quiz bowl at the time. As part of my medieval studies minor I had the opportunity (and probably the necessity) of taking several art history courses. As you may imagine I was exposed to the works of several art historians, among them Michael Baxandall whose book Painting and Experience in 15th Century Italy is a fantastic book which is more or less reflective of the modern (dare I say canonical) view of the patronage and function of Italian Renaissance art. It really is however, no wonder that Vasari is "more canonical" than Baxandall, not just due to being centuries older but due to the fact that the majority of what we know about these famous Renaissance artists comes from his work. Perhaps what we run into is the fact that because Vasari has behind him centuries and centuries of having been recognized as quintessential to the understanding of Renaissance painting he is therefore more legitimate to ask about than someone like Michael Baxandall who will be more known to a specialist than a generalist. For example the contributions of people like Richard Krautheimer, Eve Borsook and the very recently deceased Ernst Kitzinger have contributed in tremendous ways to our modern understanding of late antique and Byzantine art whereas this was a little explored topic before the turn of the 20th century. Of course I mention these people because they are of special interest to me but in N years these names may be important enough to get noticed. As Art History seems to be a little studied field among quiz bowl players (someone please speak up if you're a hardcore art history major) beyond the purpose of identifying creator/work we don't often hear of people beyond Vasari. I suppose this is one of the great things about college: to be able to specialize in something we have a lot of interest in. This of course raises the obvious point that one person's specialty is the obscurata of the other 98% of the quiz bowl "corpus" of players. The merit of a new topic is something that will probably be either ultimately accepted or rejected by the players as a whole. There is perhaps no other way to expand said canon without writing the questions. I suppose the existance of the Nobel Prize brings instant canonicity to an otherwise obscure writer/chemist/doctor etc. Historians and Art Historians do not have such a prize that is well known enough to thrust an individual into the limelight - yet another reason why such personalities may be only known to specialists. To some extent I may be merely reiterating a somewhat thoroughly discussed topic of this group but I found it interesting that Mr. Blim mentioned art history which is something I can at least claim to know a thing or two about. Thanks, Ross in NoCal
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