Selected topics will be discussed and will vary from year to year.

.25 or .5 or 1 unit — Byrnes, Chui, Djinovic, Getty, Gray, Green, Hinkle, Light, Miller-Stevens, Otake, Popovic, Sarkowsky, Stoller, Wiehe, Woodard, de Araujo

Previously Featured Offering

American Origins of Non-violence Study

Feb. 2016

American Origins of Non-violence Study explores the unsung heroes of America's nonviolent social change movements. Students will examine of the works of nonviolent groups, such as prison reformers and abolitionists, to better understand how these unnamed people have contributed to social change.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said America is the greatest purveyor of violence in history. A different story celebrates the contributions of Quakers, Anabaptists, abolitionists, prison reformers, labor unions, women, minorities, environmentalists and others who firmly established the power and effectiveness of nonviolence as an organizing principle. The course explores some of these Americans and their work through the lens of active nonviolence.

Feb. 2012
Instructor: Scott Krzych

From the earliest 2D games (Space Invaders, Pong, Pac-Man) to the open environments of Grand Theft Auto and World of Warcraft, this course examines the worlds, characters, and narratives of videogames.

As systems of play, games produce meaning through the establishment and exploration of complex rules. The reliance on arbitrary rules distinguishes videogames from other aspects of life (Why does Mario have three lives?), even as the advancement of graphic engines and modes of interactivity increasingly break down divisions between game and world. Accordingly, this course examines the various ways in which videogames intersect with and borrow from other modes of play, performance, and artistic/cultural/political expression.

The course begins with a survey of videogame history and the major concepts/debates surrounding the emerging field of game studies. We then consider the aesthetic intersections between videogames and cinema, both in popular forms of “machinima” and in more experimental practices. Finally, we examine at the various ways in which videogames operate throughout popular culture: in the emerging field of “persuasive” or political games, as allegories of digital culture, and as agents in the development of individual and collective identity.

Offerings