Briley, Ron. “Doing the Right Thing by Teaching Film in the American History Classroom: Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989) as a Case Study.” (2007)

Ron Briley considers his use of the film Do the Right Thing (1989) as part of a unit that examines Hollywood’s depiction of the African-American civil rights movement in the 1960s. His goals include facilitating students’ visual literacy and their ability to analyze contemporary media. Briley’s approach to film is primarily through examining film as a reflection of the milieu in which a film is produced. He argues that, due to the volume of film viewing by students (and Americans in general), academic skills utilized to analyze other historical documents should be applied just as thoroughly to films.