ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the use of film to challenge students' common understandings of the US Civil War, and also provides a case set in the context of a high-stakes testing environment in which teachers are allowed little freedom in the selection of topics they teach or ways in which those stories can be told. This case focuses on a "Causes of the American Civil War" section of the North Carolina standardized US history curriculum. Ms. Reed's junior-level US history survey course was observed in the spring of 2009. Ms. Reed's junior-level US history survey course was observed in the spring of 2009. The school, Jackson High School, is located in a major suburban district in North Carolina, where Ms. Reed's classes include honors and "regular" sections of primarily 11th grade students. Ms. Reed always tries to build in some geography, usually in the form of map work, as part of her units.
