Objectives:

Students will
1) Make meaningful connections between a selected novel set in their home geographical region and the real and commonly perceived characteristics of their region's culture: its geography, climate, economy, architecture, dialect, ethnic groups, etc.
2) Read critically and resist (that is, show how it might be biased in a number of ways) the novel's portrayal to a broader audience of these aspects of their region's culture.
3) Create a multimedia presentation of their resistant readings of the novel and link that presentation to a web of other students' readings and annotations.

Materials:

Enough paperback copies of the novel for each student, access to a computer lab with multimedia authoring software such as Hyperstudio 4.0, a scanner and/or digital camera, a VCR or DVD player, a digital or VHS video camera, and Internet access.

Activities:

1) Students will read the regional novel selected by the teacher. It can be either contemporary or historical fiction, but a historical novel will offer more possibilites for comparison/contrast between the region's past and present cultures. Even more interesting would be a novel set in one period and written in another, still long enough ago to examine the cultural assumptions of the period in which the author was writing. For illustration purposes, I will describe activities based on Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind, which continues to influence most Americans' perceptions of the South, particularly the Atlanta, Georgia area in which it was set. The setting is, of course, the American Civil War period (mid-1800s), but it was published in 1936, and the film debuted at the Fox Theater in Atlanta in 19

2) After discussing/analyzing some of the ways the novel portrays the region, students will select an aspect of this portrayal they would like to research. The teacher should compile a list of possible topics and/or angles for resistant readings to guide students at this point. Using my Gone With the Wind example, for instance, students could research:

clothing fashions of the Old South (how they differ among race, class, sex, and individual taste, or how they influence gender roles/ or racial stereotypes)
rural vs. urban culture (the agrarian South/ urban-commercial North)
the plantation economy
the role of slavery in the economy, the war, or race relations
1930's assumptions about race vs. the 1860's and today's in the South
food and hunger ("With God as my witness, I'll never go hungry again!")
family and children
gender stereotypes (Melanie the saint vs. Scarlett the bad girl or Ashley the gentleman vs. Rhett the pirate)
the rise of the merchant class post-war
dialect (esp. white/black differences)and how it is represented in the novel
cultural attitudes about alcohol, weapons, or other controversial/taboo things
Neoclassical architecture
Romanticism in the novel
indigenous plant or animal life now/then

3) Students will then use the Internet and/or local libraries, museums, archives, or any other local resources or locations to find print, audio, and video evidence to support their claims about their selected research topic. For video evidence, students could use: selected portions of any film versions, plays, excerpts, documentaries about the author, or other filmic material related to the novel, videotaped interviews with local people, footage of locations or monuments, video clips from the Internet and so on.
Audio evidence could include folk or regional songs, taped interviews or examples of dialect, readings from the novel or related works (by the author, actors, or the students themselves), local nature sounds, or other recordings. Graphic evidence could include period or current photographs, paintings or other art from the region, student-made computer drawings or animations. Text evidence could range from dictionary definitions, pronunciation guides, or etymologies to feature newspaper articles on folk issues or scholarly criticism of the novel.

4) Students will use computer lab time to learn the basics of the multimedia program (Hyperstudio or other), especially importing text, graphics, sound, and video clips into the multimedia files. Relevant portions of the novel can be scanned into the program, and then students can create links to their evidence and commentary/reactions to these text excerpts.

5) Students will write up a defense of their interpretation of the novel and present this to the class orally while they share the evidence they have collected, either on a projection screen or a computer hooked to a large-screen T.V. monitor. Their work may also be uploaded to the school's web site if this is possible.

Evaluation:

Students and Teacher will create appropriate grading rubrics and/or checklists for effective resistant readings, research, and presentations. Students who have worked in groups on their projects will evaluate themselves, each other, and the group as a whole both in terms of group process and the quality of work done. The class audience will also fill out these checklists or rubrics for the presentations, with appropriate weight given to the teacher's evaluation.

Back to Multimedia Lessons
Back to my Auburn HOME PAGE