Films are an excellent way to help students recognize how recurring ethnic stereotypes differ from a variety of more complex depictions. Film adaptations of literature about and by ethnic minorities provide the opportunity to teach how differing narrative techniques invite viewer identification with protagonists and engage viewer emotions in ways that nonfiction texts do not. Comparing film adaptations with literature and comparing feature and documentary films with written acccounts of historical events and social issues promotes critical reading of both visual and written texts. Participants will explore how integrating ethnic film into the high school classroom can teach multicultural and visual literacy, promote critical reading and thinking, and reveal the variety of ways ethnic identity, history, culture, and literature can be represented. We will examine film representations of these ethnic groups individually and successively to understand how each ethnic group has a distinct history and culture yet shares common concerns about stereotyping and historical and cultural accuracy in film representations.
Film is a powerful means of instruction, a valuable tool for teaching humanities topics.
One goal of this institute is to help secondary teachers initiate proposed curricular reforms. These standards also recommend that teachers possess expertise in print as well as nonprint media. To these ends, we will examine how films represent ethnic American history, culture, and literature, and we will explore how to read the formal features of ethnic minority films as techniques artistically employed to shape viewer response. We will limit our study of American cinema to Hollywood films and independently produced films and videos. We will also occasionally screen films in the evening and will have several opportunities to meet with visiting filmmakers and film scholars over lunch or dinner.