In light of research on diversity learning and teaching, this article describes how an introductory course on cinematic depictions of African Americans taught at a predominately white, rural university campus leads students to see the impact of history and Hollywood on their own local and statewide communities. Like others who teach courses on…

The date is September 9, 2005. This article is set in a rural Wisconsin community, a thousand miles north of New Orleans, where Hurricane Katrina is about to make landfall. The four- and five- year- olds in Mrs. Olson's classroom have never experienced a hurricane or seen flood waters rise to cover the farms and houses they know, but they cannot…