Dr. Thompson gave a faint nod, then dropped her gaze to her laptop.
Taking the hint, Audrey went into her office, leaving her door open too. She sat and booted up her laptop, and sure enough, she had an email welcoming her to the Sustainability Committee. The first meeting was this Thursday, which gave her a few days to get up to speed on what would be expected of her.
Too bad she couldn’t just ask the woman across the hall ...
But Audrey could tell when someone wanted to be left alone, and she tried very hard not to make a pest of herself. She was excessively enthusiastic by nature, but she could control herself when needed. At any rate, the committee should be a great way to get involved and prove her commitment to the university.
Her phone pinged with an incoming text, and she smiled to see her mom’s name on the screen, followed by a string of happy emojis in response to Audrey’s classroom selfie. She’d also received a department-wide email from Stuart, the department chair, inviting everyone to a “welcome to the new school year” cocktail gathering at his house. Audrey added that and the committee meeting to her calendar, tryingnot to think about the fact that Dr. Thompson would likely be at both events.
“Good afternoon, and welcome to Fundamentals of Art History. I’m Dr. Thompson.” Michelle swept her gaze over the roughly fifty students in attendance. This being an entry-level class that fulfilled the university’s art requirement, it was usually large and filled with students who had little to no interest in art or history. As such, it was her least favorite class to teach. And yet she got stuck with it, year after year.
Even worse, this semester it was being offered in a single three-hour Thursday-afternoon block. Right now, she just wanted to get through this first week of classes. It was always the hardest, a shock to her system after a quiet summer spent immersed in her research.
This summer, she’d spent several weeks in St. Ives, a seaside village along the southwest coast of England, in Cornwall. The area had long been a hub for local artists, playing an important role in the development of British modernism after the war. While she was there, Michelle had become fascinated with the artist Eliza St. Claire.
St. Claire’s paintings embraced the Romantic style of the late 1800s, often-stormy seascapes with figures reaching for each other over the waves, and she exhibited a preference for dark, moody colors. While her paintings focused on nature, when she included people, they were always female figures. What a fascinating woman she’d been and rumored to have been a lesbian as well.
For obvious reasons, the sapphics were always Michelle’s favorites.
How she longed for the opportunity to teach St. Claire’s work to a room full of eager students. Michelle’s fingers clenched against the lectern as she forced her thoughts back on topic.
“We’ll begin today with a brief look at some of the earliest art known to man, a fascinating peek into human lives some forty thousand years ago. Even more interesting, it’s up to us to interpret what we believethese cave markings mean, using historical clues. Just as scientists must imagine what dinosaurs looked like based on their fossilized skeletons and other scientific data, historians have to make an educated guess as to why someone sketched ancient horses and deer in a cave in France.”
Michelle paused, unsurprised to see that many of her students were looking down, probably playing on their phones. The rest stared blankly in her direction, looking like they’d rather be anywhere but here. She held in a sigh. New semester, same problems.
Nonetheless, she carried on, taking them through a variety of ancient carvings and paintings. This lesson wasn’t her favorite either. She preferred more recent periods of history, when she could sink deeper into the artists behind the art, especially the often-overlooked women like Eliza St. Claire. Michelle might not get to teach Women in Art, but she’d always included as many female artists in her classes as she reasonably could or, at least, as many as she was allowed.
In the beginning, her classes had featured closer to an even split, which seemed only fair, in her opinion. Male artists were often the most famous. They tended to get all the attention, but women throughout history had been creating art that was just as magnificent, and she wanted her classes to reflect that fact.
But there had been complaints. She’d been asked to adhere to a more traditional curriculum. So here she was, teaching about the same overrated male artists everyone had already heard of. It was infuriating ... and disillusioning.
As the class exited the room at the end of those interminably long three hours, Michelle began to pack up. She thought idly of the exuberance on Audrey’s face this morning as she’d headed off to teach a class. If she really focused, Michelle could remember when she herself had been that enthusiastic, probably around the time she’d had Audrey as a student.
If only her students now were as engaged as Audrey had been then.
“Great class, Dr. Thompson.”
Michelle looked up from her briefcase to see a silver-haired woman giving her a thumbs-up as she passed the lectern. She’d noticed at the beginning of class that she had a mature student in this session, but it had slipped her mind once she began her lecture.
“Thank you,” Michelle told her.
The woman, whose name escaped her, waved as she left the lecture hall. Michelle enjoyed having older students in her classes. They tended to be people who were here because they wanted to learn, whether they were working toward a career change or fulfilling a dream of attending college that they had been denied earlier in life.
This woman seemed to fit that mold, and Michelle was curious to learn her story. She made a mental note to remember the woman’s name after her next class. She walked outside into a light rain, grateful for her umbrella. As she entered Holman Hall a few minutes later, Michelle saw Stuart walking in her direction.
“Good afternoon, Michelle,” he said. “How’s your semester going so far?”
“It’s fine.” She shrugged, but then curiosity got the better of her. “I was surprised to learn that Audrey’s teaching Women in Art. I thought you were opposed to offering that class, since you kept turning down my proposal?”
“Ah.” He rocked back on his heels. “I probably should have spoken to you about that before the start of the semester. I apologize for not doing so. Time got away from me.”
She kept her expression neutral, waiting for him to answer her question.
“I was never opposed to the class,” Stuart said, his expression apologetic. “Your proposal just never stood out to me. Audrey’s did. Her proposal felt fresh and exciting. She’s incorporating some modern elements into her syllabus to really bring the history alive, and since she’s new here, it felt like a good time to give that class a trial run.”
Michelle blinked, stung. “Oh.”
“It’s nothing personal.”
