12 Years a Slave

Twelve Years a Slave is an American slave narrative written by Solomon Northrop, published in 1853. In 2013, the story was remediated into a feature film by John Ridley (screenplay) and Steve McQueen (director) and went onto win several of the 2014 Academy Awards, including Best Picture. In addition to its thematically rich content and all-star cast, the film’s effective use of structure, cinematic motifs, framing, contrasts, and dynamic characters make it a rich text for analysis.

Teaching Resources

The viewing guide below is intended to walk students through choices made in the movie, as well as consider the ways in which these choices are working to develop content and engage with the audience. The film guide also uses asterisks* to indicate to students when they are asked to provide a personal or interpretive answer with the hope that this will give students confidence to think critically and develop an independent interpretation. The questions and activity have been designed to target students who are novice to intermediary in their skill development with regards to critical viewing and analysis. The questions serve as instructional tools to illustrate how to observe, question, and synthesize information and details being developed in the film. On the viewing guide, the film has been divided into three parts (minutes provided in the viewing guide) to be viewed over three lessons.

Note to Teachers

At the time this post was written, the film 12 Years a Slave was available on Amazon Prime and Netflix, making it easily accessible to students who need to re-watch the film or are absent. If needed, this is also a good sub plan because the questions are clear and specific, and there are clear time markers to aid the student (and substitute).

Assessment

At the end of this unit, students wrote a “Starter Essay” comparing 12 Years a Slave with a literary text we had studied, Oroonoko. The comparative essay questions are more general in nature, and invite the students to consider the ways in which the texts are similar in content, form, and effect. The rationale behind doing a “Starter Essay” is that students get exposed to the examination process (seeing a prompt they have not seen on a topic or feature they may or may not have considered) and then are given the opportunity and experience to ‘think on their feet’ without the time commitment of writing a whole essay. I find these activities helpful early in a course when students are a bit insecure about how much they can write and are still learning how to construct a solid argument for the rest of the paper to follow. In the early stages, many students need more time to process and articulate an argument in response to the question, and the “Starter Essay” helps to isolate this skill without overwhelming the student with the entire task. A student’s areas of growth are usually clearly evident in the first three paragraphs of a comparative essay (thesis, support, evidence integration, use of transitions, and comparative analysis), so this also helps the teacher use time effectively.