Ludic Memory

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The panel examines how games interact with historical memory. Games that let you play with history have an uneasy relationship with historicity. When playing, you both inhabit a history, and defy it, whether by winning a historically lost battle or by negotiating an ahistorical peace. At the same time, the fantasy of playing with history demands veracity: there needs to be real history there for choices to feel meaningful. The panelists consider multiple perspectives on how games represent or outright produce historical memory.

Sub Unit

• Arts I: Visual Culture, Material Culture, Applied and Fine Arts

Chair

• Daniil Leiderman, The University of Pittsburgh

Papers

• Representations of the Warsaw Uprising in Games and Graphic Novels - Yvonne Poerzgen, Ruhr U Bochum (Germany)

• The Ludic and the Anti-Memorial: The Many Games Named 'Perestroika' - Daniil Leiderman, The University of Pittsburgh

• Remembering the Reichsrat: Students as Austro-Hungarian Parliamentarians - Zachary Austin Doleshal, Sam Houston State U

Discussant

• Spencer Small, U of Pennsylvania