While reading Antigone, I wanted my students to think about gender today in America, but also all over the world. My first decision was to make this lesson a multi-part two day assignment, with space built in if we ran over time. I had students work in groups to explore different primary source image and article sets arranged by theme.  The six themes for each class included women’s education, fashion, violence, voting, war and finally equal pay. In their groups, each student was responsible for a single artifact and completed an individual reflection on the image or article before discussing their findings in their groups. Each group then made a mini-poster identifying two similarities between the artifacts, two differences, a symbol and the moral message from all of the artifacts.  Finally, each group presented to the other members of the class to share their findings. While this was a lot of work on my end, in all but one class, each group was able to present their findings and make connections back to Antigone and women’s rights in an authentic way.  The documents themselves ranged in complexity and format.  For example, the group on violence against women contained signs protesting dowries in India, etchings from the Salem Witch Trials, images from the #MeToo Movement, and an article about child marriages in Nepal. In each class, the group that received the most outrage was the group studying women’s fashion. Overall, there seemed to be a greater sense of engagement and understanding as to why we were having these discussions.  Finally, this activity provided avenues for future inquiry, and there was a noticeable tone shift about gender and gender expectations in my students’ written reflections at the end of the unit. 

English/Language Arts   primarysources Antigone PhilWP