Read Diket
Chair, Department of Art
Professor of Art & Education
rdiket@wmcarey.edu
(601) 318-6205
Read Montgomery Diket graduated from the University of Georgia, Athens, with an interdisciplinary degree that combined psychology, art history and criticism, and art education. This combination of research interests continued a focus from her masters’ degree at the University of Southern Mississippi—how gifted individuals learned in the arts. Her undergraduate degree was from the University of Mississippi where she studied studio art and education.
Dr. Diket holds the Sarah Gillespie Endowed Chair for research at William Carey University and is chair of the art department. She has received numerous national grants, served on editorial boards, reviewed and presented nationally and internationally, and published widely in the arts, assessment, and in education. Her study now centers on aesthetics and artistic learning informed by neuroscience and critical theory. She has contributed to the broader strand of research investigating leadership in the twenty-first century.
Dr. Diket received the de Jong Award for service in 2016, and was named National Art Education Association Higher Educator of the Year in 2003 and won the Barkan award that same year for best publication in the field. Dr. Diket was selected Distinguished Fellow for the National Art Education Association in 2006 and subsequently elected as Fellows membership chair. She has served in numerous national offices, recently as president of Women’s Caucus National Art Education Association; earlier as president of the Seminar for Research in Art Education in NAEA, president Brain, Neurosciences and Education group in the American Educational Research Association, president of the Arts in Education, AERA. Dr. Diket is National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) certified and licensed to work with subject area databases. She works with NAEP Arts consortium researchers, the Data Visualization task force, and the Mixed Methods Working Group. Dr. Diket served as lead editor for the NAEA History at the seventy-fifth year, 2022, now in press.
As an artist, Dr. Diket paints in naturalistic, abstract and semi abstract styles, using a variety of paint media. Her body of work includes seascapes, ideational compositions based on basal consciousness, and portraiture. The work embraces experimental, evocative, and sensorial sources as she seeks to grasp and present ideas through media, technique, and critical theory.
Website: https://www.readdiket.com/
