Case Western Reserve University’s Art History Department and the Interactive Commons wowed at the Medieval Academy of America’s annual conference, held this year at the University of Notre Dame. Prof. Elina Gertsman and Reed O’Mara organized a session on the use of immersive technologies in teaching, and in addition staged a HoloLens demonstration with the help of the incomparable Peter Gao and Karen Rhoad from the Interactive Commons. The demonstration focused on Prof. Gertsman’s Gothic Chapel and Prof. Elizabeth S. Bolman’s Red Monastery apps, while the session itself also included a presentation by Sonya Rhie Mace, the curator of Indian and Southeast Asian Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, which discussed the uses of HoloLens at her recent Revealing Krishna show. Several PhD students and an undergraduate student traveled from CWRU to take part in the conference. It was a riveting show of what may result from the collaborative interdisciplinary projects between university units and between institutions, and with how much excitement these projects are welcomed by the broader academic world.

From left to right: Vivian Lewis (undergraduate student, CWRU art history), Zoe Appleby (PhD student, CWRU art history), Sonya Rhie Mace (CMA), Elina Gertsman, Reed O’Mara (PhD candidate, CWRU art history), Cecily Hughes (PhD student, CWRU art history), Rebekkah Hart (PhD student, CWRU art history), Karen Rhoad (CWRU Interactive Commons), and Peter Gao (CWRU Interactive Commons)