Dr. Clayton Funk
- funk.86@osu.edu
- Website: http://claytonfunk.com
- Assistant Professor
Biography:
Biographical Sketch
Dr. Clayton Funk came to Columbus from New York, where he taught as an art educator, at SUNY New Paltz and Queens College CUNY, and worked as Digital Resources Librarian at Teachers College, Columbia University. Currently, he combines his background in information science and art education as a webmaster and Visiting Assistant Professor in the OSU Department of Art Education. He earned his bachelors degree from Northwest Nazarene College, in Idaho, and a master of fine arts degree in painting from Bowling Green State University, in Ohio. He also holds a doctorate in art education from Teachers College, Columbia University. In additon, he has a masters degree in library science from the Queens College School of Library and Information Studies, City University of New York. Funk's first teaching job was as Technical Director in Theatre, at Goshen College (Indiana). He has also taught research methods and cultural studies since finishing his doctorate.
Research
Funk's background in the history of education is really a study of the histories of learning and the construction of agencies that transmit culture across the generations (to paraphrase Bernard Bailyn.) His research in history and art education tends to focus on the 19th and 20th centuries, in North America, particulary between 1890 and 1940. Interest focuses on the fit of the history of education within strains of cultural, social, and material cultural history. That statement means that the value of histories of educational thought and of schools is as important as that of school buildings, technology, and what they imply about the cultures we value. These histories reveal a web of learning filters, learning ways, and learning machines. Ideas that were once emblemized in stone are now fabricated into electronic pulses, here and gone in seconds.
Funk has published articles, book chapters, and book reviews on the history of education and material culture, and technology in the first half of the 20th century. In the studio, he works in fibers and wood, in addition to web design and programming.