The Glory Assignment
By Patrick O'Brien
[1] Teaching the Civil War and the racial aspects that accompany the subject can be a tricky endeavor. It is easy for a high school history teacher to fall into a scenario in which the racialism of the Civil War and the time periods before and after are depicted as historically distant and somewhat irrelevant to today. The Civil War, for teachers, is filled with promises and perils. It can be a moment to teach the students about empathy, social justice, and to connect those values with the context of today, or it can reinforce a paternalistic view of race relations, while reinvigorating a racial hierarchy, albeit in a newer, softer, and subtler form. African Americans and the issue of race have been afforded only a marginal presence in most high school history curricula and textbooks. These issues do appear when studying slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights Movement, but often it still manages to be a chronology of "dead white men" and is usually incorporated into a nationalistic story of mostly unerring and inevitable American progress toward freedom. Figures not "white" often appear as underlings and add-ons, as do their critiques of "whiteness." As such, it often becomes necessary to bring in other sources, such as speeches, images, political cartoons, music, and statistics.
[2] One of the most popular sources used to supplement the textbooks are films. Jeremy Stoddard and Alan Marcus have found that the most widely used film of the Civil War Era is Glory (1989), the film based on the all-volunteer African American Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth Regiment. Stoddard and Marcus argue that there is a "burden of historical representation" that is greater when films, such as Glory, portray the historical agency of groups that are traditionally marginalized in most history curricula and high school history textbooks. Considering the underrepresentation of these groups in traditional classroom sources, the films may represent a major portion of what students learn about the role of African Americans in U.S. history (Stoddard and Marcus 27). This essay will elaborate on the argument of Stoddard and Marcus and explain how this author (a high school history teacher) plans to use the film in class.
[3] Stoddard and Marcus, both former teachers, write largely in response to their finding that high school history teachers use the film Glory (and Amistad) quite consistently and often show the entire film. They polled eighty-four Connecticut and Wisconsin teachers in 2004 and found that fifty- two percent of those teachers use the film, and seventy-five percent of those teachers had students view most or all of the film. Also revealing was the finding that seventy-seven percent of teachers who use the film regard the film as a way to teach subject matter, and eighty-nine percent use the film as a "tool for helping students develop empathy and bring a time period to life." Of the teachers in urban districts (read: "black") -- which made up twenty-three percent of the survey -- only twenty-six percent of the respondents used the film, while seventy-six percent of teachers in "white" suburban districts -- who made up seventy-six percent of the survey -- used the film. The data suggests that Glory warrants close scrutiny as a pedagogical tool and begs us to explore why "white" classrooms are three times more likely to use the film. As such, Stoddard and Marcus attempt to answer the question of whether or not the film meets the "burden of historical representation."
[4] Stoddard and Marcus ultimately conclude that Glory does not meet the strict burden when examined alone, and they argued that, for this reason, the teacher should engage in pedagogy that forces the students to form a more complex and diverse understanding of the contributions of all groups (33). The authors are quick to argue that film, like any text, arrives with a point of view. The task at hand is to study the source in depth and analyze, for example, the effects of certain decisions made by the filmmakers and how they might influence our perceptions. Stoddard and Marcus do credit the film for going further than most traditional texts in challenging the "long established historical narratives and giving voice to the history of marginalized groups, but not without some dilemmas" (27). They assert that it is difficult to portray history through film because of the tendency of Hollywood to fit historical stories into a "traditional generic film narrative, often leading to a compacted and simplified historical narrative." The authors also claim that "Hollywood films also tend to be made for a broad general audience, so the history of the majority of this audience -- traditionally white and middle class -- is emphasized, and dramatic liberty is taken with the story to make it more engaging and understandable for that audience" (28).
[5] Not surprisingly, therefore, the black characters in Glory were not as developed as Shaw’s, and the film is told mostly from the "white" perspective, at the expense of the perspective and stories of the African American characters. Stoddard and Marcus argue that the film fails to raise larger issues about slavery and race. While it does a better job than many other texts, it still dovetails with the same "whitewashed" narrative of Civil War history by showing some of the horrors of slavery and racial relations but "also keeping these somewhat decontextualized by . . . placing the blame on specific groups of whites (i.e. Southerners and Irish) (33). The film, as Stoddard and Marcus see it, also implies that the "black soldiers" needed white guidance to become civilized (i.e. the torching of the town of Darien) and that racial problems were resolved by the Fifty-fourth and the Civil War (i.e. the dumping of Shaw and Trip in near embrace). The authors conclude by listing four criteria for a successful pedagogy around the film, criteria that were paramount in the formation of a suggested assignment discussed below:
1) the film should be part of a larger analysis of the era.
2) the students should be forced to identify and assess "the main perspectives and themes of the film, beyond the general topic."
3) students should be asked to consider how the film "reflects the social and cultural values of the period in which it was produced."
4) the teacher should consider using shorter clips from the film to raise specific issues or introduce specific issues (Stoddard and Marcus 34).
[6] The assignment that is linked on this page is intended for an honors class and can be adapted for a lower level of academic readiness. Ultimately, the students will be viewing the film and in reader response groups discuss the film on a wiki and present their findings to the class. Since time is of the essence, it was decided that the students will watch the film outside of class, although a group viewing may, and possibly should, be an option. The students, similar to Stoddard and Marcus, will be attempting to assess the wisdom of using Glory in the classroom by "reading" the film. The students very likely will feel empowered and motivated by performing an analysis that seems, and is, of pedagogical value. It provides the students with a voice that they are not accustomed to having in the classroom. After the project is introduced in class by reading through the assignment packet (linked below) and allowing the students to choose their own groups (for they will theoretically be meeting outside of school to view the film and create a presentation), the majority of work is done by the students outside of class. The introductory paragraph on the assignment page is an adapted summary of Stoddard and Marcus’s essay and provides them with the context and purpose of the assignment.
[7] The assignment is split into three parts. In Part I, the students will be responsible for viewing the film, reading reviews and scholarly essays about the film that are linked here (http://www.warrenhills.org/Page/4640), and taking notes by answering fifteen questions. This forces them to articulate, albeit in an informal way, their initial thoughts on the film. In Part II, the students will be asked to consolidate their understandings. They are to each write a "conversation starter" on a wiki (such as www.wikispaces.com), which will force them to articulate themselves in a more formal way. They are to remain focused on the essential question but should keep their notes in mind. The conversation starter is to be one or two thoughtful paragraphs in which each student offers an early and individual analysis of the film’s usefulness as an historical document (refer to the rubric). The wiki post is to end with one or two student-generated open-ended questions that are intended to provoke discussion. The students are responsible for responding to and engaging in conversation with at least three of their classmates, two of which are outside their group. This is to create a sort of "group think" atmosphere, in which the students can express their individual ideas but are exposed to the thoughts of others. In Part III, the students will be responsible for presenting their consolidated understandings. Each group will be responsible for a twelve to sixteen minute presentation, which includes a clip (or clips) from the film that is representative of their analysis. In other words, they are to provide a "reading" of an aspect of the film in an attempt to gauge its usefulness in the classroom. The students will be expected to use their notes and their wiki posts to guide their presentation. As such, it will be expected that their analysis goes beyond a simple analysis of the historical accuracy of the film but uses what they will read about the changes the film made to the historical record to assess the effect of those decisions. The class will be given the opportunity to ask probing questions after each presentation.
[8] After the presentations are completed, the class will debrief by participating in a "Group Think Share" discussion, in which a discussion question is posed, the students then have an allotted time to "free write" their responses in silence, and then to discuss their thoughts in groups, to be followed by a class discussion (the first two steps are timed). This structure of the discussion forces the students to articulate themselves (i.e. not hide), and by allowing them to hear the thoughts of others, enabling them to gain confidence in their own thoughts by defending or adding complexity. Suggested questions are below and are designed to get the students to think about the overarching questions that they may have missed in their presentations, and they provides a venue for a discussion that will be focused and appropriate as a result of the presentations.
[9] Possible GTS Questions:
How accurate does a film have to be, and by what criteria, in order for it to be viewed in class? In other words . . . accurate in what way? If a film raises important historical and social issues but has elements of fiction, where should a teacher draw the line when deciding to use it?
What does the viewer learn about the history of African Americans and their role within US history when films like Glory are viewed in class? (focus on race, racism, and freedom)
What do you think about the four main "black" characters? Were they simply stereotypes? Were they complex? Were they underrepresented? Is that a weakness or strength of the film, in terms of its historical message?
Does Glory meet the "burden of historical representation"? Should teachers use it? If so, how? In other words, if you were the history supervisor for a high school, what would you recommend to your teachers regarding this film?
Supplemental Materials
