3.0

Average Course Rating

What is play? How does play form part of our social being and innermost sense of self? What importance do particular games hold not only in players’ intimate lives but also in social formations, from quirky subcultures to nations and empires? Historians of play contend that games precede formal philosophy and religion and are arguably the forgotten basis on which societies took shape. As a way of being in the world, play may be understood as a mode of symbolic action and of engagement with the object world. But playfulness is also something more than behavior and meaning alone; it is also that tacit context surrounding activity and signaling “this is play.” When we play today, we may be training or distracting our minds, creating or destroying entire worlds, teaching or transgressing ways of being in the world. Anytime we play a game we enter into it by free volition, yet we surrender our autonomy to its rules and constraints. Play is deeply paradoxical and paradoxically deep! This First_year Seminar will explore the bounding of time and space, the shaping of identities, the cultivation of skill, and the construction of social reality through play. Through ethnographic studies of virtual worlds, simulations, casinos, sports, and war games we will encounter new approaches to understanding imagination, labor, competition, hierarchy, and other key cultural ideas. In addition to outings to observe leisure spaces and film screenings, we will also play selected games, examine their mechanics, and reflect on their worlds of possibility. Finally, you will draw on course materials to design a game of your own and play-test it with classmates.