Advanced Topics in Modern and Contemporary Japanese Literature and Culture (322-0-20)
Topic
Video Games in/as Japanese Culture
Instructors
Thomas Martin Gaubatz
847/491-2766
1880 Campus Drive, Kresge Hall, Office 4-345
Office Hours: varies by quarter, please contact instructor
Meeting Info
University Library 3322: Tues, Thurs 12:30PM - 1:50PM
Overview of class
AY 22-23 What kind of stories do video games tell, and what do these stories tell us about the cultures that produced them? How does the uniquely interactive nature of games give shape to the stories that they tell and the meanings that they convey? Where does the experience of play fit into the stories through which a culture produces meaning? This course explores these questions in the context of Japanese cultural history from the 1990s to the present. Our aim is simple: to learn to interpret games. Our approach is to furnish the historical and conceptual contexts necessary to make interpretation possible. We focus on a series of dominant narrative paradigms and subcultural tropes—apocalyptic fantasy, world-type, survival, etc.—and ask how these are rendered in game form. While our focus is ultimately on games as a form of narrative, we aim also to understand how the active and interactive nature of the game medium shapes the meanings that these texts convey. In particular, we ask how video games think about history: what they say about the historical situation faced by Japan between the close of the 20th century and the dawn of the 21st, where they reflect traces of deeper history that persist in that moment or where they efface those traces to present an eternal present of play, whether they contain the possibility of imagining a future.
Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion
Evaluation Method
Attendance (10%), participation (10%), discussion forum (10%), extension essay (10%), weekly group presentations (10%), final group project (20%), final project proposal (5%), final project (25%)
Class Materials (Required)
All reading materials will be distributed in PDF form; assigned games will be made available in the Kresge Media and Design Lab.
Class Attributes
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area