Film Literature of Middle Eastern Women: Explorations from Egypt, Iran, and Turkey

This curriculum unit is designed for use in a high school setting English / Language Arts classroom, but can also be used in part in a World History class. In recent years, United States television viewers and frequent web surfers have increasingly been exposed to media that far surpasses the borders of our nation. With this in mind, this unit will assist in expanding students’ knowledge and understanding of traditions, language and culture of Turkey, Iran, and Egypt from the female perspective. In this way, students will be challenged to question and/or reevaluate popular media representation of Middle Eastern female traditions by provoking thought via women in film as the focus of the unit’s pedagogy. This unit will also increase students’ knowledge of these countries as U.S. news accounts occur in the Middle East, giving reason to increase students’ exposure in learning using new technology- map and geographic browsing, website analysis, and sociopolitical searching via mobile devices, recent software technologies, and the Internet.