Implementation of “Timeline of women’s rights in Europe” (SOI-IT-416)

 I decided to implement in one of my class the learning scenario “A Timeline of women’s rights in Europe” by Angela Capezzuto.

The main point of my implementation is to guide students in reflecting on the evolution of women figure over the centuries and therefore in the conquest of their rights, including political ones. In addition, the scenario aims to help students in reflecting on European literature between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in particular how reflects the social achievements of women and their different roles in society.

I chose to implement the learning scenario “A Timeline of women’s rights in Europe” with student aged 16-18 years old. I am an Italian literature teacher, but to implement this scenario I have decided to highlight also aspect of  History and Art, even if this topic is not included in our school curricula. I decided to add also other activities from another scenario March – the month of (Romanian) women (LS-RO-579).

I have decided not to follow all the activities included in the original learning scenario because I was interested in focusing on the role of the literature in women’s rights in Europe.

To start the activity I have asked my students to use Europeana to search for material about the historical framework and social changes following the Second Industrial Revolution. Students have to present to peers the material they have found and explain if they can use this material according to the copyright. I decided to skip the brainstorming and use this activity to introduce the historical period.

Together with my students we explore the Historiana Collection “Visual Representations of Women at Work”, I used the questions presented in the original scenario to help students to reflect on how the image of women changed in Art.

After this activity we focused on literature and in class we listened to excerpts from Ibsen Drama “A Doll’s House“. This audio on Europeana is available only in Romanian, but I decided to share this with my students because I really would love to help them to experiment different way to enjoy literature, and how in the past was common to have books drammatization in Radio program. Then we read together some passages of “A Doll’s House” in Italian. I described to my students the drama “La Lupa di Verga” and I showed them the original booklet on Europeana. We made some reflections on the “fatal woman” carachter and how this was linked to  D’annunzio novel  “Il trionfo della morte”. In the following lesson, we read together in class some extract from “Madame Bovary” and made reflection on ow in the nineteenth-century appeared stereotype.

At the end of the activities I invited the students to use all the material used during the lessons were used by students to create a timeline of Women’s rights in Europe.

The student’s experience with this story of implementation was positive. They understood that art, in all its manifestations, anticipates and manifests socio-cultural changes. Thank this scenario they also had the opportunity to discuss authors of European literature who are little represented in Italian national guidelines..

I found the scenarios available on “Teaching with Europeana” very interesting, because most of them had an multidisciplinary approach. This is very important because working in this way it is possible to connect different aspects and give to students a complete framework of different topics. In addition, on Europeana are provided many resources covering different aspect of European cultural heritage.

Did you find this story of implementation interesting? Why don’t you read about the related learning scenario? A Timeline of women’s rights in Europe (IT-LS-559) created by Angela Capezzuto

Did you find this story of implementation interesting? You might also like: 

• March – the month of (Romanian) women (LS-RO-579) by Ana-Maria Zăloagă
• Gender Identity and the Roots of Prejudice (LS-DI-555) by Rosanna Busiello
• The Path to Equality Land (LS-RO-639) by Alina Ramona Vlad

Do you want to discover more stories of implementation? Click here.

CC BY 4.0: the featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana and has been provided by the Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino.