Today, you need… ●unit packets ●writing utensil ●highlighter (optional) ** PLEASE, Have your homework out on your desk and ready for me to stamp! **

Quick Debrief Tell someone close to you: How did you use what we learned about New Historicist/Marxist Theory to analyze The Giving Tree? I’ll be coming around to stamp homework.

Old Business Let’s try to get caught up. 5 th Period: Marxist Analysis of Maleficent 6th Period: New Historicist Analysis

Until lions tell their stories, tales of hunting will glorify the hunter. –African Proverb

Postcolonial Theory An Introduction

Postcolonial Theory ● Colonialism is a powerful force o Shapes political features of countries, identities of colonized and colonizing people o Success depends on “othering” colonized people, seeing them as dramatically different and lesser Source: Wikimedia CommonsWikimedia Commons

Postcolonial Theory ● Colonizing and colonized people tell different stories. o ∴ meaning arises in the difference in narratives between colonizing and colonized people ColonizersColonized People distort experiences and realities of colonized people aim to articulate more empowered identities and reclaim cultures

How can you apply this theory? Try asking questions like… 1.How are colonizing and colonized people portrayed? 2.What “Others” are present in the text? 3.What cultural conflicts are present in the text? a. How do the colonized culture and traditional western culture interact?

Quick practice: Rephrase this sentence from a postcolonial perspective: Christopher Columbus discovered America.

Application to Maleficent 1.Who is the colonizing group? Who is the colonized group? 2.How do different cultural values interact? 3.Sort the main characters into two groups: colonizing and colonized. a. Choose one character from each group. How do they embody the categories of both slave and master?

An Introduction Critical Race Theory

Critical Race Theory (CRT) ● Recognizes racism as engrained in “the system” and society of the United States o Individual racists need not exist for institutional racism to be pervasive in the dominant culture o Existing power structures are based on embedded white privilege and supremacy Source: Rare Historical PhotosRare Historical Photos

Critical Race Theory (CRT) ● Emphasizes the distinction between storytelling and counter-storytelling o Importance of individual narrative o Naming one’s own reality ● ∴ meaning derives from how power structures continue to marginalize people of color

A few words on privilege… “I have never understood why some people are lucky enough to be born with the chance that I had, to have this path in life and why across the world, there is a woman just like me, with the same abilities and the same desires and the same work ethic and love for her family, who would most likely make better films… only she sits in a refugee camp… I don’t know why this is my life and that’s hers. I don’t understand that but I will do as my mother asked, and I will do the best I can with this life, to be of use.” —Angelina Jolie

How can you apply this theory? Try asking questions like… 1.Whose narrative is considered valuable? 2.What privileges do some characters have that others don’t? 3.How does an individual narrative illuminate (racial) oppression? a. Is this literal or metaphorical?

Application to Maleficent 1.What is the established power structure 2.Whose narrative is deemed valuable? a. Whose narrative has been more valuable in the past? 3.How does Maleficent’s narrative shed new light on the events of Sleeping Beauty?

Homework 1.(Re)Read Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree. 2.Analyze the text using what you’ve learned about the Postcolonial and Critical Race Theories and our class models that analyze Maleficent.