Wartime Photos & Northern Ireland

In his first press conference, President Obama was asked whether he would--in the spirit of the transparency promised during his campaign--reverse a ban on media coverage of the coffins of dead soldiers arriving at Dover Air Force Base.

He deferred answering until he had "understood all the implications involved." Once those implications are understood, what do you think Obama will decide--and what, in your view, should he decide?

One of the consequences of reversing the ban would be to provide stark visual reminders of the costs to Americans, borne primarily by soldiers and their families, of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The publication of such photos would not necessarily make an anti-war statement.

Any statement the photos did make would depend a great deal on context. Imagine a photograph of a flag-draped coffin with the following caption: "Only hours before his death, Hector Gonzales told his buddies that withdrawing U.S. troops now would undermine everything he had fought for."

Then, contrast that with the same photo appearing over a caption like: "Thousands of Americans have died in Iraq, and many times that number have sustained terrible injuries."

The different emotions likely engendered by the two captions reveal that captions are a crucial part of the context that determines photographic meaning. Roland Barthes, the great French literary theorist, wrote of "anchorage," or the fixing of the meaning of a photograph by its caption.

One of the most obvious examples of such fixing occurs in newspapers, where, under a photograph of a famous person, there is sometimes a caption describing what that person's expression signifies (e.g., "She's mad!"). While the stakes of describing a movie star's emotions don't tend to be high, the same cannot be generally said for descriptions of war photos.

Find and download two wartime photos from World Conflicts Today. Read through the captions associated with each, and, using the caption as a guide, explain in your own words what you believe the photograph means.

Then, for each photograph, write a new caption--consistent with what you have learned about the conflict--that radically alters the photograph's meaning.

If you found this exercise instructive, check out ProQuest's new video series: Captioning the Taliban: Teaching Students How to "Read" Historical Photographs.

March is Irish-American Heritage Month and an opportunity for students to learn more about Ireland and in particular, Northern Ireland where so much violence has occurred over the years.

Northern Ireland is located in the northeast tip of the island of Ireland, a few miles west of the United Kingdom, in the North Atlantic Ocean.

Violence has traditionally occurred because people who disagree about the status of Northern Ireland have been unable or unwilling to settle their differences through negotiations. The big point of contention has been whether Northern Ireland should be part of the United Kingdom (U.K.) or the Republic of Ireland.

Much of the violence in Northern Ireland has been carried out by paramilitary groups known as "republicans" and "loyalists."

Republican groups, who are predominately Protestant, want to see Northern Ireland become part of the Republic of Ireland. Loyalists, who are predominately Roman Catholic , want Northern Ireland to stay loyal to and remain part of the United Kingdom.

Imagine you are living in one of the counties in Northern Ireland that contains a large number of Catholics. Pretend you are at a town meeting in which residents are invited to stand up and argue either for reunification with Northern Ireland or for continued union with the United Kingdom. Write a report of at least 150 words that contains the major points that you would make to support one side of this issue or the other.

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