Kenneth Haltman is a professor of Art History at the University of Oklahoma. He received his B.A. from Wesleyan University in Comparative Literature, Creative Writing, and Translation and his Ph.D from Yale University in American Studies.

Some of his honors are "Thomas J. Watson, Fulbright-Hayes, Andrew W. Mellon, and Henry C. Luce Foundation fellowships; research awards from Winterthur, the Huntington Library, the American Antiquarian Society, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Endowment for the Humanities; Senior Research fellowships at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Frick Art Reference Library; a Terra Foundation Visiting Professorship in the History of American Art at the JFK Center for North American Studies at Freie Universität-Berlin; and, most recently, a Distinguished Visiting Lectureship at the University of Western Australia".

At the University of Oklahoma Haltman has taught "introductory and advanced courses in American Art History and the Art of the American West, Undergraduate Methods, Graduate Methods, and a suite of rotating seminars in Visual Analysis, Material Cultural, and Critical Issues in Recent Art History at the core of the graduate curriculum".

Haltman's other publications are "Looking Close and Seeing Far: Samuel Seymour, Titian Ramsay Peale, and the Art of the Long Expedition, 1818-1823 (Penn State University Press, 2008), Butterflies of North America: Titian Peale’s Lost Manuscript (Abrams, with the American Museum of Natural History, 2015)".

Haltman has also translated French publications such as L’Évolution du goût aux États-Unis, d’après l’histoire des collections; Earth and Reveries of Will; Fragments of a Poetics of Fire.

“Kenneth Haltman, Ph.D.” University of Oklahoma , www.ou.edu/finearts/visual-arts/programs/bachelor_of_art_in_art_history/kenneth_haltman.html.

I chose the article "The Secret to Good Writing: It's About Objects, Not Ideas" by John Maguire as my supplemental text. Maguire claims that students nowadays cannot write clearly and convey their ideas efficiently and he defends this claim throughout the entire article. Though Maguire states that a couple of decades ago students were generally better writers, he does not mention when the writing skills of the general population of students went downhill.

Maguire identifies over-abstraction as the cause for this phenomenon. He believes that students oftentimes focus on and emphasize abstract ideas they do not fully understand, perhaps due to their age and inexperience in life, in their writing, which results in vagueness and desperate repetition.

Maguire creates the impression that teachers who are obsessed with ideas, and not concrete things, are the main contributors to the poor writing skills of today's students. To better the writing abilities of students, Maguire suggests that students should focus on physical objects - specifically "things you can drop on your foot". He claims that this is something both skilled and unskilled writers can do and that eventually students will get a good grasp on more abstract ideas, since all abstract ideas derive from physical objects.

Maguire, John. “The Secret to Good Writing: It's About Objects, Not Ideas.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 2 Oct. 2012, www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/the-secret-to-good-writing-its-about-objects-not-ideas/263113/.

The speculation process appears to be the most subjective part of the Prownian analysis since every single person will experience a given object in their own unique way. This is what separates one person's analysis of a material object from another's. The next step of the Prownian analysis, which is research, allows writers to consult other people's works on the selected object, so they can see other people's interpretation of the object and convince themselves that their work truly brings something new to the table.

related to teaching or education

Pedagogic (n.d.) In Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary. Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pedagogic

Many people who enjoy reading, including me, would agree with this point. Though Haltman and Maguire reach out to different audiences, both of them would agree that over-description is an existing phenomenon and that it is desired to avoid it.

Personally, I could not agree more with this point because I detest complexity in writing that is done on purpose. I do agree that sometimes it is necessary to describe something in depth, be it for personal or philosophical reasons perhaps, but doing it all the time creates unnecessary confusion and makes me lose interest in the subject of matter. I do recognize the fact that some people naturally tend to over-describe objects and events and that they cannot do anything about it, however, I simply cannot stand them and I do my best to distance myself from them. On the contrary, there are people who despise those who rarely go in depth when it comes to objects and events. Those people might enjoy the works of writers like Henry David Thoreau and Jack London, but I, however, do not.

Since the introduction to American Artifacts will serve as a guide for most, if not all, of our writings this semester, it is important to come back to these ideas every time a material object is brought up. Practically any material object may spark at least some of these thoughts in our heads, and this list will definitely not let us get lost.

Maguire would surely not want unskilled writers to focus on these abstract ideas since this could result in a murky and repetitive writing. Personally, I have encountered such writing before and I support Maguire on this one. I also believe that a general philosophy course should be a prerequisite for a writing class, since philosophy analyzes and studies these abstract values.

In other words, Haltman suggests that we go beyond the object itself and analyze the abstract values that it could signify. Maguire, on the other hand, suggests that unskilled writers should avoid any kind of abstraction and focus only on the physical object. Haltman and Maguire appeal to different audiences and both of them are correct if that is taken into consideration.

These physical descriptions are exactly what Maguire would encourage his students to focus on when dealing with material objects. Haltman, on the other hand, suggests that the writer must utilize both abstractions and concrete adjectives and nouns, implying that the writer must find a balance between abstraction and concrete description.

• to permeate or influence as if by dyeing

Imbue (n.d.) In Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary. Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/imbue

That is how a writer should interpret material culture. While American Artifacts focuses solely on writing, it is important to note that there are other ways of interpreting material culture. A historian would completely disregard this statement and analyze material culture in his own way, while a scientist would do something completely different. Personally, I think that utilizing all approaches to material culture would yield the best results possible.

While this statement is true, the interpretation of material culture can be subjective. Different people find different meanings and values in the same objects. If one decides to focus on the object itself, like Maguire suggests, then such ambiguity would be greatly diminished.

This is crucial to remember when analyzing the AIDS quilt. Normally, one would only describe a couple of remarks about a picture, usually something that stands out to the viewer, but for an "evolved" description one must focus on every single detail in that particular picture. In other words, for the best possible description of a material object one must explain it in such a way that even a blind person could comprehend what the object looks and feels like.

Since self-consciousness comes with age, it could be concluded that older people tend to be better at describing material culture than younger people because they would be able to form stronger bonds with the object they would describe. Maguire needs to take this point into consideration when analyzing the cause of poor writing skills among students these days. Personally, I think a couple of decades ago students produced better writing because they were more intellectually mature compared to students nowadays.

Haltman is correct here. A weak description is oftentimes full of ambiguity, which makes it lose its value as a description. A good description, on the other hand, allows the reader or listener to interpret the object described in his own way.

"Try to avoid foreclosing interpretive possibilities by narrowing your focus too far. For now, simply explain the direction (or directions) in which you find yourself headed, the sort of research you anticipate undertaking, and the research problems the endeavor poses."

Haltman, just like Maguire, recognizes that one can sink in over-abstraction, which is undesirable.

This point is also emphasized in Maguire's "The Secret to Good Writing: It's About Objects, Not Ideas". Maguire identifies the importance of this skill in writing and claims that students these days do not bring concrete examples in their writings.

This is not only the key to good description, but also the foundation of good writing in general. Without a rich vocabulary one would, in certain contexts, sound like a clueless child, whereas a writer who posses an expanded vocabulary would make the reader think the writer is a mature adult. This point would certainly be emphasized by Maguire since he suggests to his unskilled in writing students that they focus solely on the physical objects when writing. For someone with a not so rich vocabulary, a thesaurus would be a great tool for writing better descriptions.

This statement highlights the importance of daydreaming when writing about material culture. Maguire needs to take this into consideration when looking for the cause of poor writing skills among students these days.

A study has shown that daydreaming plays a crucial role in boosting creativity and that technology such as smartphones, computers and television distracts us to the point where daydreaming becomes impossible, thus diminishing our creativity. Nowadays in most Western countries technology is so prevalent that you cannot even hide from it. Most young people nowadays spend most of their free time looking at their smartphones or playing video games on computers, whereas more than two decades ago youngsters spent most of their time outside. The effect of technology on the writing skills of 21st century students is not to be ignored.

Katie. “Is Technology Killing Creativity?” Hello Rindle, 3 Oct. 2016, hello.rindle.com/is-technology-killing-creativity/.