By looking at each of these posts separately, we learn a little about the time period before the Civil War, many of which are focused on the treatment of women or the treatment of black people. By viewing these posts together, we get a bigger picture of what the Antebellum period’s literature looked like. Women were writing to show their own experiences trying to support their families without the ability to readily find work in Ruth Hall; they were writing stories that depicted what their lives were like growing up as a biracial girl in the north in Our Nig. Men were standing up for the rights of men and women alike by writing stories about sinning in a time when religious ideals ruled over the expectations of both genders (although they affected women more readily) which we see in The Scarlet Letter. And stories from black men tell us the experiences that they went through as they were forced into slavery and their determination to find freedom from oppression.

The reason that I was drawn to using film adaptations was because film allows cultural relevance to expand to a higher population of people and it also allows for a new demographic to obtain the knowledge of people outside their own perspective. A good example of this is with someone like myself. Although I enjoy novels, I am not really big into history and I have often overlooked historical novels because I worry that they will be boring. However, historical novels as well as historical films that are made in a way that can draw people in, will teach new people about history in a way that is more interesting to them and perhaps lead them to look more into the topics presented.

Another interesting thing about using film as the main theme in my padlet is that there are so many films that make or remake stories about novels from the antebellum period. This shows that not only are we still interested in learning more about it and reaching more people, but we are still finding new ways to look at the story and to present it to an audience in ways that keep the story relevant. A good example of this was in the post about Little Women. This post I mentioned two recent movies, but there are at least two other film versions of the book. The same could be said for movies based on The Scarlet Letter which I chose to mostly focus on the subtle connections between Easy A and the novel instead of posting about the film based directly on the book.

The original intent of the project was going to be to showcase various forms of art, but I realized early on that the significance of the Antebellum period was more interestingly depicted in film because it reaches a larger audience than fine arts do. I struggled to find paintings or other forms of art made recently that focused on that time period. But because film is so culturally relevant to us now, the film industry has created a huge supply of historical films based in this time period that we can use to supplement our knowledge of the period along with the texts that we read in class.