CONSIDERING CURRICULUM IN POST-9/11 CULTURAL CONTEXTS: THE STORY OF MOVIES AND THE POLITICIZATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN
Open Access
- Author:
- Troutman, Stephanie
- Graduate Program:
- Curriculum and Instruction
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- May 06, 2011
- Committee Members:
- Gail Louise Boldt, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Gail Louise Boldt, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Jeanine M Staples, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Irina Aristarkhova, Committee Member
Marie Hardin, Committee Member
Lindah Mhando, Committee Member - Keywords:
- curriculum
citizenship
female representation
racial identity
post-9/11 culture - Abstract:
- This dissertation focuses on the 2006 Story of Movies interdisciplinary, film curriculum for the movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and the contours of American identity as represented therein. The Story of Movies materials were commissioned and created by The Film Foundation in partnership with IBM and TCM- Turner Classic Movies. Using experimental methodological frames, bricolage and intersectionality, the research aims to understand multiple ways of reading the texts contained in the data set: the motion picture Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), the Story of Movies teacher’s guide, and the students activities that correspond to the film. Furthermore, the curriculum’s productions of race and gender are explored through visual and linguistic tropes. Focusing on historical and cultural imperatives outlined in the curriculum, the research questions prioritize race, namely Afro-descended identity/ies, and gender roles- specifically feminine performance, in conjunction with post-9/11 citizenship identity to carefully consider curriculum ideology, and what constitutes the ideal American citizen. Ultimately, I argue that the Story of Movies retooling of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington focuses on nation-building and national pride as rooted in a white (male) historical narrative of the country’s social development via World War II, and through the type of democracy promoted within the United States government, namely the U.S. Senate. Examining these institutional cornerstones, I centralize race and gender in order to present possible counter-narratives in order to challenge this under-complicated perspective of who and what a citizen is. Additionally, I work to address the bias found within the curriculum not only by highlighting shortcomings through unequal representation and misappropriation, but also by critiquing and revising contemporary school curricula to not only include, but to emphasize social justice. The Story of Movies curriculum package is not only teeming with examples of race-related deficiencies, but also it fails to problematize (and thereby reinforces) unequal gender roles. While in some ways the film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (as an individual, cultural artifact) can be justified by the socio-historical context in which it was produced, the curriculum itself, in its deliberate packaging of the film and its corresponding teacher and student materials, can claim no such justification. By failing to provide students with the critical tools to discern these problematic representations within the films that are part of this curriculum, in addition to other films that the students are likely to see or encounter, the Story of Movies is— at the very least— complicit in perpetuating the myth of multicultural democracy.