Fall 2024 'Serious Games and the Past' Digital Humanities Course

In fall 2024, the Department of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures is offering a DH Special Topics course on "Serious Games and the Past." This course will be taught by Curtis Maughan, director of the World Languages Digital Humanities Studio and teaching assistant professor of digital humanities in WLLC.

In this course with Maughan, students will explore the creative, aesthetic and ethical issues that emerge when playing serious video games that explore the past. 

The course will focus on the driving question of "what can we learn about the past from serious video games?" which the class will approach from an interdisciplinary and international spectrum of perspectives.   

To find out, students will play a diverse collection of serious games, from indie titles like The Darkest Files (Paintbucket Games, 2024) to AAA blockbusters like Assassin's Creed: Odyssey (Ubisoft, 2018). This course will pay special attention to the myriad ways mainstream and indie development trends are deeply interconnected — especially when it comes to strategies for engaging with serious, historical subject matter. An international group of award-winning game designers and game researchers will visit the course to discuss how serious video games engage with the past—and why the past is so important to the future of the video game medium.  

In addition to playing video games, students will engage with a range of texts from game studies, the digital humanities, German studies, media studies and philosophy. This course is open to undergrads and grads; no prerequisites. 

Course Information: 

DH Special Topics: "Serious Games and The Past" 
TuTh — 2-3 p.m.
WLLC 3980V-004 SPT (9699) 
WLLC 5750V-004 LEC (9700) 
with Dr. Curtis Maughan (WLLC, Digital Humanities) 

Please email Maughan at cmaughan@uark.edu with any questions you have!