seeing 19th century Tuscaloosa buildings closely

Kilgore House

Bryce Hospital

President's Mansion

Woods Hall

St. John Church

House in The Winter Guest

First National Bank

Manly Hall

I asked the students to pay close attention to long shots and close ups of the exterior of a house in the 1997 motion picture The Winter Guest, which was filmed in Scotland. They were asked to think about the structure on which they are writing for their first short essay, which is due next week. Further, I asked them to wonder about the people who once inhabited or visited their structure. They were then asked to draw a sketch, even an imperfect one, of their structures, which are presented above, and list adjectives to describe them. I was very pleased with their work.

The Winter Guest has been a favorite film of mine for years. As the late film critic Roger Ebert once wrote, it is not a film that tells a story as much as it is one that evokes a mood. This is something to which I wanted the students to be attentive as they watched four sets of characters over  the course of one day in this movie and view this house. When the semester began, I told them to think about space and place as both ideas related to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, during the nineteenth century. As the semester progresses, I see progress in their ability to do as much with this deliberately abstract concept with which the historical literature in recent years is grappling in our increasingly small, but still very complex world.

The students who participated in this assignment are Anne Marie, Lewis, Bryon, Michael, A.J.,, Ryan, and Regan. I look forward to seeing everyone's essays as well as their photographic and possibly video images of their historic structures. Information from their essays and some of their images will be presented in a short film that will be shown in our final class meeting.