Four documentaries produced by Periclean Scholars at Elon will be used to supplement learning materials and textbooks by Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, a leading publisher in the academic field. Details...
Wadsworth/Thomson Learning has purchased the academic rights to four documentaries produced by Elon’s Periclean Scholars Class of 2006 about the HIV/AIDS crisis in Namibia. The company will publish a DVD containing the documentaries and provide it as a free resource for instructors who use the company’s textbooks.
Wadsworth will also use video clips from the documentaries on its Web sites for sociology and anthropology students. On these sites, called SociologyNow (http://sociology.wadsworth.com/sociologynow/) and AnthropologyNow, students can download study resources that complement concepts presented in textbooks. Clips from the documentaries will be part of those study resources. Additionally, a study guide including discussion questions and learning exercises is being produced this semester.
Rachel Copeland, a member of the Periclean Scholars Class of 2006 said, “I think it is important that other university students will learn about HIV/AIDS and become passionate about it the way we have here at Elon. As an education major this project is giving me great real world experience by writing the study and discussion questions and also in spreading the idea of global citizenship and how to see things in a global context.”
Funds from the purchase agreement will be directed to non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) in Namibia that are working on the HIV/AIDS crisis in that country.
One of the documentaries that will be used by Wadsworth is titled “A Measure of Our Humanity,” directed by Katrina Taylor ’04. The film has been included in the lineup at three film festivals, most recently the Oxnard Independent Film Festival in Oxnard, Calif., on Sept. 18. “A Measure of Our Humanity” examines the daily struggles of Namibians with HIV/AIDS. The documentary includes interviews with AIDS orphans, HIV victims and workers with NGO’s. Taylor’s film was also screened at the Carolina Film Festival in Greensboro, N.C., and the Artivist Film Festival in Hollywood.