War Games

Dismissed, mocked, feared or loved for decades, video games have become a staple of contemporary media, art, and popular culture, studied alongside literature and film. They eclipse the global yearly revenue of both film and music industries combined, leaving their financial significance undeniable. What remains understudied, however, is the political and cultural significance of the medium as they relate to literature and other forms of cultural production. War Games is a course dedicated to the intersection of literature and video games with political violence (both real and imaginary) in a global and particularly post-Cold War context. 

Students will learn the fundamentals of narratology as they explore the formal mechanisms of literature and its relation to digital games. Through this, they will learn to recognize patterns of ideological communication in both literary texts and video games while developing close reading skills of traditional and digital media. We combine the study of literature and video games with broader inquiries into the media that circulate through the game mediaverse. Reading books and playing games, we pose the following questions: How do writers and readers imagine war through literary texts, how do players “perform” war in games, and how might they resist or subvert expected performances? What themes and ideas are revealed effectively through one medium versus another? What are the political implications for the ideologies present in a video game given the globalized position of the medium? Assigned readings will include novels, short stories, news media, and internet forums alongside a range of scholarly secondary materials. Students will have the opportunity to play each game on the syllabus in a group environment. All readings, materials, and discussions will be in English.