Postgraduate Course: Video Games and XR for Inclusive Heritages (fusion on-site) (EFIE11308)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh Futures Institute |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 10 |
ECTS Credits | 5 |
| Summary | This course introduces students to decolonisation work for public impact using video games and immersive technologies, with a focus on Islamic Cultural Heritage. |
| Course description |
The aim of the course is to introduce students to decolonisation work for public impact using video games and immersive technologies, with a focus on Islamic Cultural Heritage .
The course is broadly organised around the main theme of decolonisation of digital cultural heritage museum collections and history-themed video games. Students will be introduced to these as strategies to create public impact in two ways: designing inclusive narratives about global history and the medieval past, and second, raising awareness and visibility of Islamic cultural heritage in GLAM collections, and making this heritage widely accessible using immersive technologies.
Students will learn through a combination of: mini lectures followed by group discussion; individual reading; supervised group activities; individual research and knowledge exchange as well as creative communication of research findings. Students will have the opportunity to reflect on case studies of their choice in the pre-intensive, and to choose from a range of given case studies for supervised group activities during the intensive. Case studies will cover a range of games and GLAM examples. Guest lecturers will be invited, to enhance interdisciplinary teaching and offer students the opportunity to connect with key industry professionals in academia and beyond.
Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) - On-Site Fusion Course Delivery Information:
The Edinburgh Futures Institute will teach this course in a way that enables online and on-campus students to study together. This approach (our 'fusion' teaching model) offers students flexible and inclusive ways to study, and the ability to choose whether to be on-campus or online at the level of the individual course. It also opens up ways for diverse groups of students to study together regardless of geographical location. To enable this, the course will use technologies to record and live-stream student and staff participation during their teaching and learning activities.
Students should be aware that:
- Classrooms used in this course will have additional technology in place: students might not be able to sit in areas away from microphones or outside the field of view of all cameras.
- Unless the lecturer or tutor indicates otherwise you should assume the session is being recorded.
As part of your course, you will need access to a personal computing device. Unless otherwise stated activities will be web browser based and as a minimum we recommend a device with a physical keyboard and screen that can access the internet.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate understanding of how video games and XR can operate in post-colonial frameworks and their possible heritage and GLAM applications.
- Conduct both individual and collaborative research into the role of video games, game environments and immersive technologies in creating and facilitating access to more inclusive histories, in Islamic heritage contexts.
- Critically evaluate the implications of bringing together video game development, immersive technologies, with academic expertise and GLAM collections.
- Communicate the outcomes of critical evaluations of strategic interventions across games, GLAM, and education to a public adult audience.
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Reading List
Indicative Reading List:
Essential Reading:
Adam Chapman, Anna Foka, and Jonathan Westin, 'Introduction: What Is Historical Game Studies?' Rethinking history 21, no. 3 (2017): 358-371.
Foulston, Marie. 'New Videogame Commissions - V&A Blog.' V&A Blog (blog), January 17, 2019. https://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/museum-life/new-videogame-commissions.
Glouftsis, Tamika. 'Can the Historical Problem Space Framework Help Us Make Better History Games? - Dream of Darkness.' Dream of Darkness Game (blog). Accessed September 8, 2022. https://www.dreamofdarkness.com/dev-journal/can-the-historical-problem-space-framework-help-us-make-better-history-games.
Hayes, Edmund. 'Playing the CyberSultan: Videogames and the Islamic Empire.' Leidenislamblog (Universiteit Leiden) (blog), August 21, 2020. https://leidenislamblog.nl/articles/playing-the-cybersultan-videogames-and-the-islamic-empire.
Lammes, Sybille, and Stephanie De Smale. 'Hybridity, Reflexivity and Mapping: A Collaborative Ethnography of Postcolonial Gameplay.' In Open Library of Humanities, 4:19, 2018. https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.290.
McCall, Jeremiah. Gaming the Past: Using Video Games to Teach Secondary History. Routledge. Accessed September 17, 2023. https://www.routledge.com/Gaming-the-Past-Using-Video-Games-to-Teach-Secondary-History/McCall/p/book/9781032223483.
Mukherjee, Souvik, and Emil Lundedal Hammar. 'Introduction to the Special Issue on Postcolonial Perspectives in Game Studies.' Open Library of Humanities 4, no. 2 (November 6, 2018). https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.309.
Ramey, Lynn et al., 'Revisioning the Global Middle Ages: Immersive Environments for Teaching Medieval Languages and Culture,' Digital Philology: A Journal of Medieval Cultures 8, no. 1 (2019): 86-104, https://doi.org/10.1353/dph.2019.0016.
Shaw, Wendy. 'The Islam in Islamic Art History: Secularism and Public Discourse.' Journal of Art Historiography 6 (June 1, 2012): 6-WS/1. http://arthistoriography.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/shaw1.pdf.
Video Games: Design/Play/Disrupt (published exhibition catalogue, V&A Dundee, 2019)
Recommended Reading:
Anderson, Glaire. 'What the New Assassin's Creed Game Tells Us about Ninth-Century Baghdad - from the Art Historian Who Worked on the Game.' The Conversation, October 3, 2023. http://theconversation.com/what-the-new-assassins-creed-game-tells-us-about-ninth-century-baghdad-from-the-art-historian-who-worked-on-the-game-209755.
Champion, Erik. 'Assassin's Creed As Immersive and Interactive Architectural History.' In Chapter 12 Assassin's Creed As Immersive and Interactive Architectural History, 239-62. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111253275-013.
Beavers, Sian 'The Informal Learning of History with Digital Games' (ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2020), https://search.proquest.com/docview/2402408898?pq-origsite=primo.
Champion, Eric et al. Assassin's Creed in the Classroom. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111253275.
'Game Studies - 'eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate': Affective Writing of Postcolonial History and Education in Civilization V.' Accessed January 18, 2024. https://www.gamestudies.org/1602/articles/ford.
Geyser, Hanli. 'Decolonising the Games Curriculum: Interventions in an Introductory Game Design Course.' Open Library of Humanities 4, no. 1 (June 11, 2018). https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.217.
Glouftsis, Tamika 'Can the Historical Problem Space Framework Help Us Make Better History Games? - Dream of Darkness,' Dream of Darkness Game (blog), accessed September 8, 2022, https://www.dreamofdarkness.com/dev-journal/can-the-historical-problem-space-framework-help-us-make-better-history-games.
Grant, Catherine, and Dorothy Price. 'Decolonizing Art History.' Art History 43, no. 1 (February 2020): 8-66. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8365.12490.
Houghton, Robert , 'Where Did You Learn That? The Self-Perceived Educational Impact of Historical Computer Games on Undergraduates,' Gamenvironments, no. 5: Gamenvironments of the Past (2016): 8-45.
Roy, Dibyadyuti, and Nirmala Menon. 'What Is Postcolonial DH Pedagogy, and What Is It Doing in Nonhumanities Institutions? Case Studies from India.' In What We Teach When We Teach DH: Digital Humanities in the Classroom, edited by Brian Croxall and Diane K. Jakacki. U of Minnesota Press, 2023.
Teaching the Middle Ages through Modern Games: Using, Modding and Creating Games for Education and Impact, ed. Robert Houghton (De Gruyter, October 2022). https://www.degruyter.com/.../doi/10.1515/9783110712032/html
McCall, Jeremiah, 'The Historical Problem Space Framework: Games as a Historical Medium,' Game Studies 20, no. 3 (September 2020), http://gamestudies.org/2003/articles/mccall.
Schwarz, Angela. 'Discovering the Past as a Virtual Foreign Country: Assassin's Creed as Historical Tourism.' In Chapter 8 Discovering the Past as a Virtual Foreign Country: Assassin's Creed as Historical Tourism, 169-88. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111253275-009.
Further Reading:
Flood, Finbarr Barry, and Gulru Necipoglu. 'Frameworks of Islamic Art and Architectural History: Concepts, Approaches, and Historiographies.' In A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture: From the Prophet to the Mongols, 1:2-56. Bognor Regis, W. Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, 2017.
Nelson, Robert S. 'The Map of Art History.' The Art Bulletin 79, no. 1 (March 1, 1997): 28-40. https://doi.org/10.2307/3046228.
Walton, Millie. 'Rebuilding Baghdad - in the New Assassin's Creed.' Apollo Magazine, October 11, 2023. //www.apollo-magazine.com/assassins-creed-mirage-baghdad-video-game-islamic-art-architecture/.
Wharton, Annabel Jane. 'Digital Play.' In Architectural Agents: The Delusional, Abusive, Addictive Lives of Buildings, 151-84. Minneapolis, Minnesota; University of Minnesota Press, 2015. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Mindset:
- Enquiry and lifelong learning.
- Outlook and Engagement.
- Aspiration and Personal Development.
Skills:
- Research and enquiry.
- Personal and intellectual autonomy.
- Personal effectiveness.
- Communication. |
| Keywords | Video Games,GLAM,MENA,Islamic Art Heritage,Architecture,History,Decolonisation,Museum Collections |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Glaire Anderson
Tel:
Email: glaire.anderson@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Veronica Silvestre
Tel:
Email: Veronica.Silvestre@ed.ac.uk |
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