Historical empathy (HE) is refers to deep inquiry in which academic and emotional responses to historical content are shaped through source analysis of the actions, motives, perspectives, and beliefs of people in the past. There are limited studies about whether students demonstrate HE through analysis of underrepresented historical figures. Additionally, studies are limited on how students’ social identities influence demonstration of HE. Consequently, there is a gap in the literature with regard to whether source analysis of underrepresented historical figures, as well as students’ social identities, impact demonstration of HE and critical race consciousness (CRC). Elizabeth Jennings is an example of an underrepresented historical figure. She was an African American teacher who was forcibly ejected from a streetcar due to her race in 1854. Jennings sued the streetcar company and won. Although Jennings set an important precedent for African Americans to use the legal system to challenge antebellum segregation ordinances, she remains a relatively obscure historical figure. The purpose of this study was to examine whether or not an instructional unit about Elizabeth Jennings called “The Elizabeth Jennings Project” (EJP) promotes conditions conducive for student demonstration of HE and/or CRC. A case study of one middle and two high school classes was conducted at one private, non-secular school in an urban area of the Northeast. Instructional methods that best promoted HE included in-class discussion and debate. Students provided insights about their social identities during focus group sessions with regard to how the EJP fostered HE and CRC.

The students of today are entrenched in various digital media; film being one of the foremost of these. If history education is to stay relevant for our students, history lessons should mirror the students’ lives outside of school. For this reason, we find it relevant to study the use of film in history education.     Our study sets out to study if, and how, historical feature films can complement traditional instructional text found in history textbooks. We aim to explore students’ thoughts about the relationship between text and film that cover the same historical context, and chose the suffragette movement in England for this context. We use theory concerning historical empathy to analyze our material, specifically historical empathy as presented by Keith Barton and Linda Levstik, which presents a combination of perspective recognition and dimensions of care. The material consists of two surveys and one group interview. We studied one school class. The first survey corresponds with the text, and the other with the film. The group interview took place just after they had seen the film. Our key findings are that students’ expressions of perspective recognition are similar in both surveys. The film survey shows an increase in the category care for, which we link to the filmic power of immersion. In the interview, however, students can deliberate, and thus weigh high levels of perspective recognition with complex aspects of care. In the interview, the students weren’t always able to achieve higher levels of perspective recognition. We link this to the importance of teacher-led instruction before film viewing. Dimensions of care related to students’ willingness to act, and care to, was the most elusive category. Further research would be required to study this dimension.