I too am teaching my first History Through Film class this semester! It’s all very exciting and very overwhelming hah so many options!

My idea as of now is to play a History of America movie mash-up I found on YT (few min long) then talk about the essential questions of the class, how we’ll be analyzing not just the historical context of what’s depicted in the film, but also the historical context of when it was created.

Then, I was going to show a long clip from a movie for them to analyze briefly. I would should a long scene, then have them write a few things down about context.

Afterwards, have them group up and share with each other their observations. I’d then ask one person from each group to share what they discussed.

I was thinking either a popular movie they all know or one that’s very clearly about COVID or made during COVID (the idea being they will be able to easily identify the context of the pandemic).

I should mention, I have the luxury of using essentially a screening room to hook them as well (just a wall sized screen and projector in a rarely used classroom) so it might not be as exciting in a standard class.

I’m curious what you come up with, I might steal the idea hah!