Deze informatie is alleen in het Engels beschikbaar.
Disclaimer: due to the coronavirus pandemic, this course description might be subject to changes.
Topics: This course tackles the following topics: Reflecting on the past through play; reflecting on the role of digital play today; the role of playful methodologies in research and teaching; how we deal with the past in the present.
Disciplines: This is done from a multi-disciplinary framework, including: Game Studies, Heritage Studies, Digital Humanities, History and Archaeology.
Skills: Skills that students will learn are based on a mixed-methods approach: Game making and playful methodologies; Auto-ethnographic methods as academic writing; Ethnoarchaeology; Digital methods; Collaboration and teambuilding.
Admission requirements:
This course is an (extracurricular) Honours Class: an elective course within the Honours College programme. Third year students who don’t participate in the Honours College, have the opportunity to apply for a Bachelor Honours Class. Students will be selected based on i.a. their motivation and average grade.
Participating students will have to consent to be part of an active research project, which will process their personal data following the EU-GDPR and following Faculty of Humanities Data Management standards.
Description:
In this course, we will explore the question: "How did we play in the past and how do we play with the past today?" For this course we will not only think and read about games from the past and today, but we will also play them and make our own past-inspired games.
The course consists of weekly classes with: lectures by Aris Politopoulos (Archaeology), Angus Mol (Digital Humanities), and Sybille Lammes (Play Studies); weekly class discussions on the theme of the week; weekly Let’s Plays on Twitch where we will be playing and discussing board and video games dealing with the past; an in-person workshop and visit to the Past-at-Play Lab.
During the course you will be asked to keep a "Play Diary" and the final assignment will be a project in which you, together with a group of your fellow students, will design your own game about the past.
This course offers a new and fun way to learn about games and the past. At the same time, you will also contribute to ongoing research and outreach activities of the Past-at-Play Lab project.
Course objectives:
Upon successful completion of this course, students will:
have an overview of current theories and concepts in both the field of games and heritage studies;
be able to reflect on the role of play in research and teaching, as well as society more broadly;
be able to reflect on the role of the past in popular culture and society more broadly;
come equipped with a diverse toolkit to think about, act on, and create playful histories and heritages, incl. how to make interactive narratives with Twine and the basics of board game design;
learn about or reinforce the value of creativity and reflection in collaborative processes;
Programme and timetable:
The classes will take place on the following Mondays from 11:00-13:00.
Session 1: November 1 - Thinking about Play
Session 2: November 8 - Pre-recorded lectures: Accessing the Past through Play
Session 3: November 15 - The Past is a Forking Path
Session 4: November 22 - The Past is (Post-)Colonial
Session 5: November 29 - The Past is Cross-sectional
Session 6: December 6 - The Past is a Playground
Session 7: December 13 - Replaying the Past
Location:
Digital Lab@Veth, room 1.07.
Reading list:
*Examples of reading material for the course: *
Graham S., I. Milligan and S. Weingart 2016. Exploring Big Historical Data. The Historian’s Macroscope. London, Imperial College Press.
Lammes, S. and de Smale, S. 2018. Hybridity, Reflexivity and Mapping: A Collaborative Ethnography of Postcolonial Gameplay. Open Library of Humanities 4(1), 1-31.
Mol, A.A.A., E.A. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, K.H.J. Boom and A. Politopoulos 2017. The
Interactive Past. Archaeology, Heritage, and Video Games. Leiden, Sidestone Press.Politopoulos, A., A.A.A. Mol, K.H.J. Boom and E.A. Ariese 2019. “History Is Our Playground”:
Action and Authenticity in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. Advances in Archaeological Practice
Volume 7, Special Issue 3, pp. 317-323.
Other literature will be announced via Brightspace.
Course load and teaching method:
This course is worth 5 ECTS, which means the total course load equals 140 hours.
Seminars: 7 seminars of 3 hours (participation is mandatory);
Excursions and event 8 hours;
Literature reading: 5 hours/week;
Practical work: 5 hours/week;
Assignments & final essay: 40 hours.
Assessment methods:
TBA
Brightspace and uSis:
Brightspace will be used in this course. Upon admission students will be enrolled in Brightspace by the teaching administration.
Please note: students are not required to register through uSis for the Bachelor Honours Classes. Your registration will be done centrally.
Registration process:
Submitting an application for this course is possible from Monday 16 August 2021 up to and including Thursday 2 September 2021 23:59 through the link on the Honours Academy student website.
Note: students don’t have to register for the Bachelor Honours Classes in uSis. The registration is done centrally before the start of the class.
Contact:
Class coordinator: Aris Politopoulos a.politopoulos@arch.leidenuniv.nl
Instructors: Angus Mol a.a.a.mol@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Sybille Lammes s.lammes@hum.leidenuniv.nl