Media Construction of the Middle East
A Digital Media Literacy Curriculum
All materials are classroom-ready, including: teacher guides, student handouts, overviews, and assessments.
Download each teachers guide, slide show or video below.
click title to view/close Unit 1: Introducing the Middle East
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Teacher's Guide: Students respond to images and identify what they already know about the Middle East, including any inaccurate information and stereotypes. The teacher defines terms like "stereotypes" and "generalizations" and give background on the geography of the Middle East.
- Slideshow of photographs from the Middle East and other parts of the world and various maps of the Middle East
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- Teacher's Guide: Students identify stereotypes about Arabs and learn the difference between stereotypes and generalizations.
Video clip of the introduction to the Disney movie Aladdin
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- Teacher's Guide: Students take a self-assessment about Middle East culture and geography. The teacher reviews the answers with a slideshow.
- A slideshow about the Middle East, including ethnic, linguistic and national identities (Turk, Persian, Arab, Kurd, Armenian, Israeli, Berber) and religious identities (Muslim, Jew, Christian) to accompany a student self-assessment.
click title to view/close Unit 2: Israel/Palestine: Histories in Conflict
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- Teacher's Guide Students examine conflicting historical perspectives and claims about the Arab/Israeli conflict by identifying and discussing bias in history texts.
- Handout in Teacher Guide. Excerpts from Israeli and Palestinian school textbooks that present conflicting histories of Israel/Palestine up to 1947; an excerpt from U.S. encyclopedia entry
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- Teacher's Guide Students review facts about the independence of Israel; analyze Palestinian and Israeli histories of 1948; and explore authorship, bias and objectivity in history
- Handout in Teacher Guide. Excerpts from two articles with conflicting perspectives from www.bitterlemons.org.
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- Teacher's Guide Students review the history of the 1967 war and its implications for the Arab/Israeli conflict. They learn to think critically about web research by exploring issues of authorship, credibility, bias, propaganda and objectivity.
- Handout in Teacher Guide. Excerpts from the Web sites of the Education Department of Jewish Agency and from www.palestinehistory.com.
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- Teacher's Guide Students explore the Intifada from both Israeli and Palestinian perspectives and analyze credibility, bias and truth in documentary film.
- Video Clips from the documentaries Days of Rage and A Search for Solid Ground.
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- Teacher's Guide Students learn about the diversity of political perspectives in Israel and Palestine by identifying political and cultural perspectives in songs.
- Video Clips Clips from "Boxed In" by Palestinian pop group Sabreen; "Falestine" by Arab songwriter Mohamed Abdel Wahab; "Shir La Shalom" ("Song for Peace") by Jacob Rotblit, performed by an Israeli military band; "Yerushalayim Shel Zahav" ("Jerusalem of Gold") by Israeli folk singer Naomi Shemer.
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- Teacher's Guide Students review historical and contemporary issues related to the political and cultural geography of Israel and Palestine. They identify and discuss the bias of maps through their choice of content, language, and symbols, and the drawing of borders.
- Slideshow 11 maps of Israel/Palestine from different sources and different time periods
click title to view/close Unit 3: War in Iraq: Whose Voice, Whose Story?
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- Teacher's Guide Students scan the sweep of Iraqi history and explore fact and opinion, objectivity and subjectivity, bias and point of view in historical timelines.
- Timelines of Iraq's history from the U.S. State Department and www.PeopleJudgeush.org - an organization that seeks to charge Bush with war crimes.
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- Teacher's Guide Students learn about Saddam Hussein and the history of his dictatorship. They explore the role of media in a totalitarian government and decode messages in a music video.
- Music video featuring Saddam Hussein that used to air at the beginning of the Iraqi nightly news.
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- Teacher's Guide Students review the history of the Gulf War of 1991, and by identifying the bias in a documentary video, they learn about the US government's role in influencing media coverage of the war.
- Clip from Lines the Sand documentary.
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- Teacher's Guide Students learn about the background history of the War in Iraq and the anti-war movement. They decode political cartoons from around the world and identify critiques of media coverage of the War in Iraq.
- Slideshow: 24 cartoons grouped into six categories: dissent, world leaders, why war?, statues toppling, U.S. foreign relations, and media.
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- Teacher's Guide Students learn about the history of the War in Iraq from "Shock and Awe" to "Democracy in Iraq" through the analysis of international and domestic newspaper front pages.
- Slideshow:Newspaper front pages from around the world, paired by date, with contrasting constructions of key events in the war.
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- Teacher's Guide Students learn about the holy Shia Mosque of Ali in Najaf and about editorial choices made in TV news broadcasts by comparing the construction of two conflicting reports on the same event.
- Video clip Excerpts from two television news broadcasts on April 4, 2003 - one from Deutsche Welle TV, a German station broadcast in the U.S. via Newsworld International and one from the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather.
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- Teacher's Guide Students learn to ask key media literacy questions and to examine the credibility of different types of TV programming, including news, news criticism and drama.
- Video clips from American Forces Radio & Television news, ABC Primetime with Diane Sawyer, the BBC documentary War Spin, and the NBC docudrama Saving Jessica Lynch.
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- Teacher's Guide Students learn about war crimes committed by U.S. forces at Abu Ghraib and discussion reasons for limiting public access to certain powerful images and information.
- Slideshow: Photographs of torture at Abu Ghraib.
click title to view/close Unit 4: Militant Muslims and the U.S.
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- Teacher's Guide Students review background information on Islam while discussing perspective, point of view, authorship, credibility, bias and objectivity in encyclopedia entries.
- Handout: Excerpts from the encyclopedia at Islam.com and from the Britannica encyclopedia online.
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- Teacher's Guide Students analyze stereotypical and counter-stereotypcial messages about Muslims in popular culture.
- Clips from the movie True Lies and from the TV shows West Wing, 24, and the Daily Show.
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- Teacher's Guide Students review key events and people in the history of the Iranian revolution through the analysis of magazine covers, images and headlines.
- Slideshow: Time magazine covers and interior spreads from 1934 through 2003.
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- Teacher's Guide Students review key events and people in the history of the Iranian revolution through the analysis of magazine covers, images and headlines.
- Clips from two documentaries - CBS's 1987 Battle for Afghanistan and Artisan's Operation Enduring Freedom: America Fights Back.
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- Teacher's Guide Students learn different views on the reasons for growth of the militant Muslim movement through the analysis of articles from newspapers and magazines.
- Handout Excerpts from the articles "Why do they Hate Us?" by Asma Barlas; "The Terrorist Mind" by Jonah Goldberg; "The Politics of Rage: Why do they Hate Us?" by Fareed Zaharia; "Why do they Hate Us?" by Phillip Yancey; from a March 1997 CNN interview with Osama bin Laden; and from George W. Bush's September 21, 2001 address to a joint session of Congress.
