India and Mexico to be featured in history workshop in March
College faculty and administrators are invited to register for a regional “Reacting to the Past” Conference at Gustavus Adolphus College (St. Peter, MN), March 14-16, 2014. Conference participants will learn about the RTTP pedagogy by engaging in intensive two-day workshops of two featured games. In addition, plenary sessions will provide an opportunity to discuss issues related to student engagement, teaching, and curricular applications.
Featured Games
Defining a Nation: India on the Eve of Independence, 1945 (W.W. Norton, 2014) is set at Simla, in the foothills of the Himalayas, where the British viceroy has invited leaders of various religious and political constituencies to work out the future of Britain’s largest colony. Will the British transfer power to the Indian National Congress, which claims to speak for all Indians? Or will a separate Muslim state—Pakistan—be carved out of India to be ruled by Muslims, as the Muslim League proposes? And what will happen to the vulnerable minorities—such as the Sikhs and untouchables—or the hundreds of princely states? As British authority wanes, smoldering tensions among Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs increasingly flare into violent riots that threaten to ignite all India. Towering above it all is the frail but formidable figure of Gandhi, whom some revere as an apostle of non-violence and others regard as a conniving Hindu politician. Students struggle to reconcile religious identity with nation building—perhaps the most intractable and important issue of the modern world. Texts include the literature of Hindu revival (Chatterjee, Tagore and Tilak); the Koran and the literature of Islamic nationalism (Iqbal); and the writings of Ambedkar, Nehru, Jinnah, and Gandhi.
Convener: Judith Walden is an Associate Professor of Modern European and Asian History at Simpson College (IA) and the Director of the Women's and Gender Studies Program. She has been teaching with Reacting since 2009, and is the author of two chapter-length games in development: "The New is Strong": The Hundred Days Reform in China, 1898 and A Virtuous Woman? The Abolition of Sati in India, 1829. She is also a member of the organizing committee for the Reacting to the Past Game Development Conference.
Mexico in Revolution, 1911-1920 (game under review, recommended for experienced instructors) is set in Mexico City during the tumultuous time of the Mexican Revolution. The game starts on November 25, 1911, the day that Emiliano Zapata and the Zapatistas have issued the Plan de Ayala calling for agrarian reform--only a few short weeks after Francisco Madero assumed the presidency. Amidst the violence and chaos of the Revolution, students take on roles representing a variety of factions (Anarchists, Zapatistas, Maderistas, Felicistas, Foreigners, etc.) and grapple with topics such as the role of government, land and labor reform, foreign investment, foreign intervention, rights of women and ethnic minorities, freedom of the press, the role of the arts and more, as they struggle to compose a constitution that reflects the concerns and interests of their character--all while considering intersections of ethnicity, identity, memory, and nation formation. Ideas surrounding the democracy of Francisco Madero, the anarchism of Ricardo Flores Magón, the agrarianism of Emiliano Zapata, and the Liberalism of Justo Sierra (among other ideas) inform the students as they make their decisions and negotiate the future of Mexico.
Author/Convener: Jonathan Truitt is an Associate Professor of Colonial Latin American and World History at Central Michigan University and the director of the Institute for Simulations and Games as Methods for Engaging Students. He is co-editor (with Mark Christensen, Susan Kellogg, and Mathew Restall) of the forthcoming Dead Giveaways II: Testaments from the Americas and author of “Courting Catholicism: Nahua Women and the Catholic Church in Colonial Mexico City” and “Adopted Pedagogies: Nahua Incorporation of European Music and Theater in Colonial Mexico City.” He is also a member of the organizing committee for the Reacting to the Past Game Development Conference.