IP270/IP370 Games and the Cultural Imagination

Module Overview

Games are one of the first ways that we learn how to learn: games are about making worlds and understanding our places within them.

On this module, we explore how games can help us to understand the development of culture, history, identity, and memory. We think about and how games operate within wider social, cultural, and political contexts, shaping individual and collective experiences and understandings.

Interested in studying this module? Register using the Liberal Arts Optional Module Choice Form

Module aims:

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

demonstrate a critical engagement with games as cultural objects

critically analyse a range of case studies

demonstrate enhanced research skills through devising and developing an independent research project

understand how creative interventions can intersect with cultural narratives and historical pedagogies

reflect critically on your own research and learning practices

Module Leader:

Dr Gavin Schwartz-Leeper

Optional module

Term TBC | 10 weeks

15 CATS

2 hour workshop per week

Available to Year 2 and Year 3 students in the School for Cross-Faculty Studies, and Year 2 and Year 3 external students.

Please note: Module availability and staffing may change year on year depending on availability and other operational factors. The School for Cross-Faculty Studies makes no guarantee that any modules will be offered in a particular year, or that they will necessarily be taught by the staff listed on these pages

Example syllabus:

Please note that this syllabus is purely indicative, and that actual module content may differ.

Theme 1: Colonisation and Civilisation

explore how games function as representations of cultural tensions and frontiers, including colonialism, apocalypse, cities, nature
engage with a range of critical perspectives, including narrativity, postcolonialism, cultural materialism, and dialectics alongside a range of ludological methodologies

Theme 2: The "Other" in Games

examine how power manifests through depictions of the "other" in games
engage with a range of critical perspectives, including gender and queer theories, orientalism, monster theory,

Indicative Assessments:

Please note the these assessments may be updated for the next academic year.

Assessment	Weighting	Description
Project Proposal	20%	Outline of plans for project
Reflective Journal	30%	Portfolio of reflections on learning
Project	50%	Creative project or critical essay

Illustrative reading list:

Champion, Erik. 2015. Critical Gaming: Interactive History and Virtual Heritage
Chapman, Adam. 2016. Digital Games as History: How Videogames Represent the past and Offer Access to Historical Practice. New York, NY: Routledge.
De Groot, Jerome. 2009. Consuming History: Historians and Heritage in Contemporary Popular Culture. Abingdon: Routledge.
Derrida, Jacques. 2006. Spectres of Marx. Abingdon: Routledge.
Gish, Harrison. 2010. “Playing the Second World War: Call of Duty and the Telling of History.” Eludamos 4 (2): 167–180.
Mortara, Michela, Chiara Eva Catalano, Francesco Bellotti, Giusy Fiucci, Minica Houry-Panchetti, and Panagiotis Petridis. 2014. “Learning Cultural Heritage by Serious Games.” Journal of Cultural Heritage 15 (3): 318–325.10.1016/j.culher.2013.04.004
Poblocki, Kacper. 2002. “Becoming-state: The Bio-cultural Imperialism of Sid Meier’s Civilization.” Focaal 39: 163–177.
Raessens, Joost, and Jeffrey Goldstein. 2005. Handbook of Computer Game Studies. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Rose, Gillian and Divya P. Tolia-Kelly, eds. Visuality/Materiality: Images, Objects and Practices. Abingdon: Routledge.
Sepinwall, Alyssa Goldstein. 2021. Slave Revolt On Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Smith, Joshua K. 2021. Robotic Persons: Our Future with Social Robots. Bloomington: WestBow.
White, Hayden. 1987. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.