Alan K. Frishman
I have chosen to write this curriculum unit on the topic "Women in Film: What Are They Telling Us?" for the following reasons:
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(1) Lack of materials. In teaching high–school American history (from 1865–present) in New Haven, I have a dearth of materials the core textbook is particularly lacking about women.
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(2) Serving the student population. My school, Career High School, has a preponderance of female students.
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(3) Making school relevant. My students understand periods and movements in American history more readily through anecdotes, personal accounts and popular culture.
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(4) Breaking down the walls between subjects. I also teach English at Career High, often to the same students who take one of my American history classes. Furthermore, I am encouraged both my own convictions and experience and by district policy to develop units that are interdisciplinary. This unit, therefore, will be designed from the outset for that purpose. Film also lends itself very easily to an interdisciplinary approach.
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(5) Going with the flow. Students learn well, believe in, and are certainly accustomed to films. To my students, the visual image is credible.
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(6) Teaching
how
and
why
as well as
when
,
where
and
who
. Teaching in a magnet high school for the medical and computer sciences and for business, I find many of my students while adept at learning bones, muscles and numbers lacking in two critical areas: an appreciation for the liberal arts/humanities, and experience in dealing with more abstract concepts. Film provides an excellent vehicle to fill this void in an easy, natural manner: A film is, at the same time, a narrative, a series of pictures, a social commentary, a technical achievement and an indicator of cultural values.
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(7) Engaging students to be more rigorous in their viewing. At the same time, my students' familiarity with film generally disguises a lack of appreciation for the components, structure and design of films. This unit will be designed to move the students in the direction of being more rigorous and, hopefully, more participative in their watching of films.
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(8) Increasing students' awareness of how information can be manipulated and how society's values are relativistic. Students are not generally aware that their ideas of good and bad for behavior or appearances, especially concerning women have been deliberately determined; that they have changed through time; that they reveal the prejudices of a particular period; and that they are subject to different interpretations.
Outline of the Unit
This unit is designed to cover a four–week (twenty–day) period, as follows:
Week One: Women and Themselves
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Their self–image
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Their identity and stereotypes
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Good girl" vs. "bad girl"
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Love, career and maternal desires
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Week Two: Viewing and discussion of Imitation of Life (1959 version)
Week Three: Women and Men
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Women, their age and men
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Men "dominating" women
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Viewing and discussion of
Tootsie
(1982)
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Week Four: Black/white
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"Whiteness" as protection
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"Blackness" and sexuality
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The "tragic" mulatto
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"Blackness" as nurturing
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Viewing and discussion of the PBS video,
A Question of Color
(1992)
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