Humanities Gaming Institute: Serious Games for Research and Pedagogy

FAIN: HT-50025-09

University of South Carolina Research Foundation (Columbia, SC 29208-0001)
Duncan A. Buell (Project Director: February 2009 to September 2011)

A three-week institute on the role of immersive, interactive technologies and games within the context of the humanities, with a year of follow-up support for the twenty participants.

We propose a three-week Institute on Humanities Gaming to develop the intellectual frameworks necessary to support gaming as an active area of humanities research and pedagogy. Our institute aims to reduce the technical barriers to the adoption of gaming as a research and teaching platform by leveraging investments in the infrastructure of computing and digital media. The institute will (a) investigate the cognitive components of games that inform and enable successful game play, including immersive structure, rule governance, interactivity, and simulation; (b) provide hands-on research into existing serious games from a variety of fields, including history, literature, linguistics, philosophy, and economics; (c) produce, under the guidance of experienced game developers, games that can scale to meet participants' research and teaching needs in the humanities.

Media Coverage

Computer game explores 17th-century village life (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Chris Horn
Publication: U of South Carolina online news
Date: 9/9/2011
Abstract: Online story about a digital humanities game under development.
URL: http://www.sc.edu/news/newsarticle.php?nid=1901