In Homo Ludens, Johan Huizinga influentially declared that “[p]lay is older than culture,” and accordingly, games and other forms of playing loom large throughout the United States: from childhood play to video games as a mass entertainment industry and the predominant form of popular culture in the twenty-first century, from sports and other games as something to either play yourself or watch others perform to the omnipresence of gamification in economics, politics, and didactics. At the same time, games are still often derided as ‘low’ forms of culture, and the specific subset of ‘gamer culture’ in particular is regularly scrutinized for its reactionary politics. In this seminar, we want to examine play and games from the perspective of literary and cultural studies and with a particular interest in the kinds of bodies that are involved and staged in processes of playing and in the spaces that games create, imagine, and invite us to manipulate.
One goal of the seminar will be to analyze contemporary video games (but also historical precursors like board games), from indie to mainstream examples (e.g., The Stanley Parable, The Long Dark, The Last of Us, Civilization, Detroit: Become Human, World of Warcraft, etc.), while paying attention to how games combine narrative, (audio)visual, ludic, affective, and other forms of meaning-making. In addition, we will search for manifestations of play in other cultural realms, for instance in postmodern experimental novels (e.g., House of Leaves) or in films/TV series that ‘play’ with the expectations of their audiences (e.g., Inception, Westworld) or in how conspiracy theories like QAnon can be made sense of as forms of play as well. To understand the intermingling of play, bodies, and spaces, we will reflect on theories of playfulness and narrativity, transmediality, affect, virtuality, and performance, among others, and use these to highlight concerns such as difference and/in games (e.g. in terms of race, gender, sexuality, and [dis]ability), agency, and immersion.
The seminar is thus not just intended for students already interested in (video) games but also wants to encourage everybody else to recognize characteristics of play and games in all facets of American culture.
- Trainer/in: Stefan Schubert