In this unit you will transform your classroom into a moment of historical controversy and intellectual ferment. Using sophisticated role immersion games (Reacting to the Past) as a way to learn, the class becomes an historical arena; students become characters from the past. Students will be divided into small groups after selecting one game from a range of games on offer in the unit (please note that not all games are necessarily on offer).

You might be Dr Ambedka, fighting for the representation of Untouchables in an India on the brink of independence. Or Emma Goldman, an anarchist at the turn of the twentieth-century in bohemian New York. You could be Philip Henslowe, the manager of the Rose Theatre, trying in 1592 to decide if it is too risky to perform Marlowe’s latest play. As a member of the United Nations in 1994 you might have to help decide if the events in Rwanda are genocide. Questions, such as the type of political system Athens should adopt in 403 B.C. confront Socrates and his supporters; are you one of them? As a Confucian scholar at the Hanlin Academy in Ming dynasty China, you must apply Confucian precepts to a dynasty in peril; can you prevail? Alternatively, you might find yourself confronting the intellectual, political, and ideological currents that surged through revolutionary Paris in the summer of 1791; can you shape the future of France? Can you, as Thomas Cromwell, succeed in reforming the English Parliament in 1529-1536?

In order to achieve your character’s agenda and your faction’s objectives you will need to engage with classic texts, undertake independent research, write speeches and position papers, give formal speeches, participate in informal debates and negotiations, and otherwise work to win the game. The game offers intensive small-group experiential learning, with team- and self-directed discovery, guided by the instructor/game master. You might like to see what other students have to say about playing these games.