Advanced Topics in Modern and Contemporary Japanese Literature and Culture (322-0-20)

Topic

Video Games in/as Japanese Culture

Instructors

Thomas Gaubatz
847/491-2766
1880 Campus Drive, Kresge Hall, Office 4-345
Office Hours: varies by quarter, please contact instructor

Meeting Info

Parkes Hall 215: Tues, Thurs 9:30AM - 10:50AM

Overview of class

AY25-26. 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. In particular, we explore how Japanese video games reflect on the condition of post-history: the sense that Japan's history was reaching an apocalyptic and entering a moment of stasis.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course, students are expected to be able to do the following: • 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, Discussion, Group Projects

Evaluation Method

Participation, online discussion, group projects, final paper

Class Materials (Required)

All course materials will be provided digitally in PDF form.

Class Attributes

Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area