ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I discuss transitioning from teaching the history of style in a chronological structure to teaching it in a reverse-chronological structure. Upending my approach to the teaching and structure of the course revealed opportunities to refocus the classwork around skill building and goals for student learning and success. The course places an emphasis on twenty-first-century research skills, visual literacy, and object-based analysis, giving students the tools to find, read, and investigate an image or object as a way of understanding period style through material culture. Building these skills not only helps students tell richer, more well-informed stories in their theatre practice but also offers them the opportunity to use the history of dress, architecture, and décor as a framework to interrogate world history.
