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HISTORY THROUGH FILM This department Is Intended to serve ab a {¡on.um {oh. the. discussion o& personal experiences with {¡tbn uÁoge. Class noom experiences , archival pA.oble.m6 and possible solutions,, theonetlcal pnablems o{¡ research In {¡Urn etc., all are. wetcome .. A special attention Is given to syllabi oft university histony courses which use {¡Um as a majon. part ol the. body O^ the. course. Please ¿end along your syllabus on. a comment on your experience In teaching on. nesearchlng "hlston.y through hilm." In this Issue we are pleased to pn.es ent, as well as a syllabus, a commentary on some o{¡ the n.ewards o I archival wonk In sound necon.dlngs . Films and American Civilization at Brookdale Community College by Richard S. Sorrell Films are an integral part of the two semester course which serves as an historical introduction to American Civilization at Brookdale Community College, Lincroft, New Jersey. One of Brookdale's philosophical foundations is the belief that there are "many paths to the same goal", and that alternative routes for presenting and assimilating material should be provided. Consequently, Brookdale uses multi-media materials in addition to the traditional print sources. The American Civilization team uses this multi-media approach most effectively by integrating educational and feature-length films into the body of the course. Students attend one lecture and one small seminar per week. The lecture is taught on a rotating basis by members of the team, with the other members serving as reactors and commentators.* The third meeting of the week is reserved for films. Each semester of the course is divided into eight units. The units and films which are shown are listed below: *Besides the author, the other members of the team are Jack Needle, Carl Francese, Fred Fraterrigo, Al Mirse and Sophie Weber. American Civilization 211 Units Films A - Philosophy of History B - Colonization C - Puritanism D - American Revolution E - Foundations of a New Government and Society F - Nationalism and Manifest Destiny - Jacksonianism - The Civil War "Anne Hutchinson" "The Howards of Virginia" "End of the Trail" "Westward Expansion" "America Becomes an Industrial Nation" "Immigration" "The Jackson Years: The New Americans - The Civil War" "Black History - Lost, Stolen or Strayed" "Negro Slavery" "The Civil War-? House Divided" "True Story of the Civil War" "The Red Badge of Courage" American Civilization 212 Units Films A - Reconstruction and the Freed Man B - Industrialization and Capitalism C - Immigration and Urbanization D - Reform Movements E - Internationalism F - Black Man in the 20th Century G - Business Culture of the 1920s and the New Deal H - New Internationalism "The Real West" "The Inheritance" "Storm of Strangers" "On the Waterfront" "The Inheritance" "Storm of Strangers" "On the Waterfront" "All the King's Men" "Wilson" "Over There" "Oh Freedom" "Martin Luther King: Montgomery to Memphis" & "Malcolm X: Struggle for Freedom" "Grapes of Wrath" "Mein Kampf" "Hiroshima/Nagasaki" "The Eagle Has Landed" 10 Feature films and television documentaries are preferred, since students often find these more absorbing than films marketed by "educational" companies. The students find the feature-length movies especially interesting and historically informative, which is why "The Howards of Virginia ", "The Red Badge of Courage", "On the Waterfront", "All the King's Men", etc. are included in the course. Students have an additional incentive to view the films both closely and critically. Brookdale is founded upon the Learning Objective approach to education. For the American Civilization course, this means that the student writes a number of short papers on clearly defined topics which are called learning objectives. The learning objectives are arranged in order of difficulty (according to Benjamin Bloom's "Taxonomy of Educational Objectives") so that the student may choose whether he is trying for a "C", "B", or "A" grade objective. Rather than assigning a subjective grade, the instructor merely determines whether the paper adequately answers the objective. If it does, the student receives the grade he attempted. If not the instructor makes specific criticisms and the student can re-do the paper in another attempt to attain the grade for which he is trying. Each unit in the American Civilization course has a list of learning objectives. However, the student may also elect to...

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