20 ACADEMIC ENGAGEMENT: FLOYD CHEUNG WHY SHOULD ANY CLASS MEET OCCASIONALLY in the museum? There are many answers to this question, just as there are many ways to teach well, but three reasons I’ve learned from my own teaching, as well as reading in the learning sciences, include enchantment, collaboration and transfer. Political theorist Jane Bennett defines enchantment as “a state of wonder” and a temporal and physical “suspension” that emerges from “active engagement with objects of sensuous awe.” After all these years working at Smith, I continue to be enchanted not only by the works of art but also the space of the museum itself. Growing up as an immigrant, I somehow missed the cultural practice of visiting museums. Now that I know their magic, I share this experience with my students, just in case some of them, too, missed this opportunity earlier in their lives. This past semester, I convened my class on American literature from 1865–1914 in the museum. We had been studying Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899). Looking at turn-of-the-century paintings of American women in the third-floor gallery widened our context for considering representations of women in Chopin’s novel. The Awakening follows a character named ACADEMIC ENGAGEMENT ENCHANTMENT, COLLABORATION AND TRANSFER: TEACHING AND LEARNING IN THE MUSEUM OF ART FACULTY REFLECTION/FLOYD CHEUNG ABOVE & OPPOSITE: Floyd Cheung and students in class at the museum