Armstrong, Stephen. “Using Popular Cinema to Study the 1960s and Beyond.” (2007)

Complementing Briley, Stephen Armstrong discusses how he teaches the 1960s through film in a senior history elective. He focuses on how films from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and today represent the culture and politics of the 1960s while at the same time reflecting a society at the time they were made. Armstrong’s approach is to expose students to a variety of perspectives, as told through film, as a means for them to critically assess both the films and various eras in U.S. History. Armstrong reports that over the nine years of teaching this course students’ reaction to the film has changed with the times. For example, students’ pre-9/11 responses to certain, films differ from those of their post-9/11 responses.