Activity Three: Analyzing A Woman of the Century Biographical Sketches
Description
In this activity, students and other contributors will select a woman to focus on, learn to analyze her biography's construction, and content, to analyze an image, to investigate social networks, to compare and contrast biographical sketches, to analyze trends, and to contemplate ways to create biographical sketches.
Duration
Two days
Objectives
- To have students and other contributors mine the project list and A Woman of the Century to select a woman to study.
- To teach students and other contributors to analyze a biographical sketch's content and narrative construction.
- To highlight the subjectivity of biography.
- To teach students to compare the content and narrative construction of a group of biographical sketches.
- To provide additional practice in analyzing an image.
- To teach students the importance of social networking in the nineteenth century.
- To have students reflect on the trends that they see
- To promote critical thinking on the most effective ways of presenting biographical information about these women.
- To give students practice critiquing evidence.
Materials
Lesson Plan Text
In this lesson, you will select a woman to focus on, analyze her biography, compare and contrast it to those of other people, and consider ways to create biographical sketches.
Please respond to the questions posed below in your blog.
1. Go to the A Woman of the Century by Birthplace page and/or the A Woman of the Century by Occupaton page and browse through the women listed. Click on the page numbers under their names and browse through their biographical sketches in A Woman of the Century.
2. Select a woman to focus on and email me about your choice.
- Write a one paragraph reflection in your blog about why you selected that woman.
- Read her biographical sketch in A Woman of the Century carefully to learn about the woman.
- Examine her image, if one is included.
3. Analyze the content of the biographical sketch.
- What occupation or occupations are listed at the beginning of her sketch? After reading the profile, would you add other occupations?
- What activities was she involved with? What do you know about these activities?
- What organizations was she involved with? Are you familiar with these organizations?
- Look at the Questions to Ponder list and answer as many of these questions as possible about your woman.
4. Analyze the way that the narrative within the biography is constructed.
- What aspects of the individual's life were included?
- What order was the information presented in?
- What was highlighted?
- What was downplayed or excluded?
5. Analyze the image
- What can you learn about the woman from the image?
- How old does she appear to be?
- What do you have to say about her appearance?
- Are there any objects in the image?
- What is the background of the image?
- Was her image on the same page of her biographical sketch, before it, or after it?
- What is your overall impression of the image?
6. Who did the biographical sketch say that she was connected to?
- Do you recognize any of these names? What does the woman's social network tell you about her? Were you surprised by any of these connections?
- Look in A Woman of the Century to see if any of those people are included in the book.
- If so, read their biographical sketches and take note of the pages of their sketches.
7. Review the biographical sketches of three other people whose sketches are on the neighboring pages.
- In what ways are the constructions of the narratives similar?
- In what ways are they different?
- Of all of the approaches, which do you find most effective in representing this woman's life?
8. In a blog post, discuss what you learned about American history, social networks, and the genre of biography through this exercise.