Visual Aids
Learning Through Art is an important activity that helps the subject matter come alive through interaction with an historical painting or political cartoon. As if visiting an art gallery, students observe the image for two minutes without speaking, allowing it to reveal itself. Students then share their observations and impressions, asking increasingly complex questions of the art and of the artist. Helpful questions to ask students towards the end of the analysis are “What is missing?” or “What don’t you see?”
The image for this unit will be Benjamin West’s epic painting The Death of General Wolfe. (Public domain) Students should note the emotion of the participants depicted in the painting, from Wolfe’s fallen state, to his emotional staff, to the Mohawk warrior placed near the center. His pose suggests any number of emotions, perhaps pondering whether to stay or to gather his prizes of war and leave for home.
I will also employ maps. Adapted from the Anderson text, the first will feature a series of callouts placed at the majority of the battles that touched most every continent in the Seven Years War. This map illustrates how this conflict, that started with the French trying to expand their trading empire in North America, soon became not just a turf battle in the Ohio River Valley, but a conflict stretching from nearly one end of the globe to the other. In tracking the various battles of the war, students will see that hostilities began at Pittsburgh and concluded near Detroit. In so doing, they will come to see that the Native Americans were anything but helpless bystanders in this conflict, as they skillfully played the French and British against each other for political, economic and military advantage. It is important that students come to see how this war moves the Indians from the margins of history as we have previously perceived them, to the very center. By doing so we will come to see that Indians are central to not just U.S. history, but all of world history. Another set of maps before and after the Seven Years’ War will illustrate the land holdings of the three primary colonizing powers, illustrating how the North American empire lost by France fueled their desire for revenge.
Comments: