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
Parkes Hall 224: Tues, Thurs 3:30PM - 4:50PM
Overview of class
AY25 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.
Learning Objectives
• Situate digital games (or tropes, techniques, genres, and styles of the same) in the historical and cultural contexts in which they were produced and/or consumed.
• Describe individual games from the perspective of given theoretical concepts and historical contexts, and use such descriptions as a basis from which to analyze their formal structures.
• Interpret digital games and game genres in terms of major narrative tropes and paradigms of Japanese popular culture between the 1980s and the present day.
• Identify deeper social, cultural, or ideological meaning or value in individual games, even when such meanings are not immediately apparent or clearly intended.
• Evaluate digital games on multiple, distinct, possibly conflicting measures of value; discuss and critique measures of value.
• Use writing (formal and informal) and discussion to enrich their own experience of digital games.
Teaching Method
Lecture and discussion
Evaluation Method
Attendance and participation, online forum, weekly group presentations, final group project, final individual project
Class Materials (Required)
All materials will be provided digitally in PDF format. Games will be available in the Media and Design Studio in Kresge Hall.
Class Attributes
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area