making an argument

Debating the Past

Brendan Murphy

Lesson Name: Debating the Past

Primary Museum Pedagogy: Narrativity

Course Title and Description: A lower level history course that covers one event or theme, ie. the Civil War or Industrialization.

Lesson Overview:  In this activity, students portray different people from history and debate historical ideas. This lesson involves two components, a written summary of the students’ chosen individual’s thoughts on a certain issue and a presentation, during which students debate a historical topic with one another. After the presentation, the class can decide who “won” the debate and why.

Read more →

Lenses – Multiple Perspectives on Historical Events

Brendan Murphy

Lesson Name: Lenses – Multiple Perspectives on Historical Events

Primary Museum Pedagogy: Narrativity

Course Title and Description: A lower level history course that covers one event or theme, ie. the Civil War or Industrialization.

Lesson Overview: Students will write a story based on a painting or image and rooted in historical fact that details how one individual or group viewed an event in contrast to another. To do so, students will synthesis readings and primary source material from a single unit, identifying the multiple perspectives surrounding a historical event or theme. This activity serves to nuance their understanding the historical moment and bring un/derrepresented voices into the narrative.

Read more →

Debating Interpretations: How Objects Are Used in Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber”

Elissa Myers

Lesson Name: Debating Interpretations: How Objects Are Used in Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber”

Primary Museum Pedagogy: Materiality

Course Title and Description: English 130, Writing about Literature: The Gothic (theme)
This is a course for second semester freshmen that is meant for hopeful literature majors, but which all Queens students have to take in some form. This means that in practice, the class has a diverse range of majors.

Lesson Overview: In this lesson, students will perform a close reading of an individual object (with significance to the story) in groups. They will then have a debate in which one group presents an argument, another group defends their argument with further evidence, and the third group critiques, or finds examples that go against their argument. We use Angela Carter’s feminist fairy tale, “The Bloody Chamber,” which retells an adaptation of Charles Perrault’s “Bluebeard,” the story of a woman’s escape from her serial wife-killing husband. However, you could use any story you want in which objects play a major role as symbols. This story works particularly well because of the rich range of resonances objects often have in the Gothic genre, and also because of the story’s emphasis on class. However, there are many other genres in which objects take on a range of resonances (i.e. horror, realism, Southern Gothic, fantasy) and for an uthemed basic course, this activity could be altered to accommodate whatever text uses objects prominently as symbols.

Read more →