Content Objectives
My hope for students that I teach is that they are prepared for a future that may look dramatically different than today. In order to be successful in the future, students need practice interpreting and sifting through information. As a Language Arts teacher, what excites me about teaching a unit that focuses exclusively on image as text is that so much of the language that is used to describe art is the same language that is used to describe literary text. Considering the mood, imagery, diction choices, selection of subject matter and theme are just some of the areas in which a conversation about a piece of art can begin to sound more like a conversation about literature. By developing student capacity to interpret art, student ability to interpret literature should also improve.
Each piece in this unit considers a text and image relationship in a different way, reflecting the content of our YNI seminar. The Detroit Industry mural can be read much the same way as we explored the Bayeux Tapestry. Similar in scale, it tells a narrative of the auto industry at the time of the Great Depression in Detroit It showed robust factories that were filled with workers, when in reality many factory workers lost their jobs while Rivera painted his mural panels in Detroit. In similar fashion, George Washington Crossing the Delaware creates a heroic and inaccurate narrative about George Washington’s actions during a battle during the American Revolution to which Frank O’Hara irreverently responds, “Now that our hero has come back to us/ in his white pants and we know his nose/ trembling like a flag under fire/we see the calm cold river is supporting/ our forces, the beautiful history.” (3) These lines are probably a much more accurate version of the truth than the popular myth created by the original painting. In Guernica, so much of the discussion of the painting relies on similar academic language that is used to describe literature that if an administrator walked into the class they might think we are discussing literature. Exploring symbolism, imagery, and mood will be key elements of the discussion revolving around Guernica. Finally, in The Problem We All Face, Rockwell’s use of a descriptive title and provocative diction image and text in powerful ways. As much as I tried to focus on the image, it became glaringly apparent that there is no divorcing the image from text and narrative.
This unit builds off of the work was done in an earlier seminar to provide a stronger scaffold for the unit that I developed then. Last year, I participated in the seminar titled, Over the Rainbow, that explored fantasy as a genre and explored derivative versions of Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and other texts. From this seminar, I crafted a unit that explored the use of critical readings to unlock deeper understanding of a text. In the unit I developed, I intended to introduce students to the multiple genres that are associated with dream worlds and fantasy. From this introduction, students were to be introduced to ways to think about literature critically through the use of Freytag’s Pyramid, selected literary criticism on the Wizard of Oz and Anthem, as well as learn ways to write fiction that incorporates the elements of speculative fiction. By the end of the unit, it was hoped that students would be able to respond to literature more critically and write speculative fiction more authentically.
The unit was successful for some, but I wasn’t pleased with the results for all of my students. It became glaringly apparent while I was implementing the unit that I was right about the need for a shift from only close reading to using critical readings that added layers of meaning. The critical readings that I found and modified were effective in getting students to think in new ways. Some students did not experience the level of success that I planned for because they struggled to interpret on their own. This unit seeks to address the extra practice that students need to grow confident and capable in their ability to analyze and interpret.
By the end of this unit, students will be able to take a piece of narrative art, describe what they see, analyze what they see, research what others have said about it, then respond to what others have noted about the piece. This practice will better situate students for responding to literary criticism in the following unit. By the end of the unit, I hope that students are more confident in their ability to interpret complex text (art or written) and apply this ability to future units of study.
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