Humanities Classroom:Johanna Drucker on captivating students’ imaginations and their evolving sense of identity

Distinguished scholar, writer, and artist, Johanna Drucker recently shared her insights with me on designing effective humanities communication to engage undergraduate and high school students. 

Our conversation began with Drucker’s thought-provoking articulation of a central challenge facing humanities communicators: “We must shift from speaking about the humanities to enabling students to speak for and through them.”

Drucker has seen traditional humcomm methods all too often fail to captivate students’ imaginations and their evolving sense of identity, resulting in a disconnect between the subject matter and their lived experiences. 

The solution? “Find a point of entry,” she said, “one that fosters identification and imagination, prompting young people to actively inhabit scenarios, ask questions, and solve problems.” This strategy informs Drucker’s teaching practice.

Imagine your parents can pay for any portrait

Visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art with her UCLA students, instead of employing a conventional lecture format to discuss the artworks—an approach she characterized as often eliciting disengagement (“they couldn’t care less”)—she invited students to connect with the art through the following prompt: “Imagine that your parents are willing to pay for any artist to render your portrait. But for them to do so, you have to tell your parents which artists you are choosing and why.”

This prompt, as she calls such provocations, effectively personalized students’ relationship to the history of art surrounding them on all four walls, spurring them to eagerly analyze artistic styles, periods, clothes, objects in ways that revealed their own reflection in the artistic portraits.

Prompts to inspire students' imagination

Drucker further argued that moving beyond a rhetoric of “crisis” in the humanities requires focusing on making the humanities relevant and rewarding. She suggested humanists tap into contemporary forms of storytelling and content creation, such as short-form writing, episodic narratives, and influencer posts in ways that ignites students’ imaginations.

“We must shift from speaking about the humanities to enabling students to speak for and through them.” Johanna Drucker Distinguished Professor and Breslauer Professor Emerita Department of Education and Information Studies at UCLA

This involves creating prompts that home in on students’ interests and allow them to inhabit scenarios they can make their own. “Imagine becoming the character of a Shakespeare drama,” Drucker prompts by way of example. “What would your life be like? What clothes would you wear? What does your home look like? Now jump one hundred  years into the future. How has your life changed?”.

To expand students’ understanding of the value of the humanities, Drucker maintains, educators must acknowledge and build upon students’ inherent desire to tell stories they can identify with and to understand how knowledge, history, and culture shape those narratives. 

Humanities communication point of entry with students: 1) Identification: Connect with young people’s own identity, and make them feel that everyone can connect, be seen, and feel included 2) Imagination: Encourage students to use creativity by placing themselves into different frameworks 3) Problem Solving: Create curiosity and motivation to arrive at a goal

Humanities and STEM

This approach transcends disciplinary boundaries, holding particular relevance for students in fields such as engineering and computer science, who, Drucker explains, can be engaged in digital humanities projects that combine imagination and world building. Students can be tasked to research and interview the needs, cultural backgrounds, and beliefs of the communities they wish to reach and serve, and integrate those findings in their field-specific projects.

Drucker’s innovative teaching methodologies can bring such approaches to life. Other teaching approaches she suggests can promote the practice of close reading across platforms, typefaces, and visual storytelling practices. For instance, she asks students to create diary entries as historical figures or reimagine film scenes across time, or redraw a page of The Wall Street Journal as a page from National Enquirer, and vice versa. By doing so, students learn how visual information design shapes messaging, identity, and history.

Apply Johanna’s technique in your classroom

1. Pick a specific topic–well-defined, lined to individual objects, events, or materials.

2. Assign a role that is individuated with which to identify.

3. Create a problem to solve that requires research in pursuit or analysis.

4. Propose an outcome or result that has a vivid story to tell in an individual voice.

5. Encourage assessment by the group by designing affirmative rubrics. What works in each instance?

By: Chritine Henseler, CHC co-founder.

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