Time Schedule:
Nicole Calian
GERMAN 497
Seattle Campus
Class description
Summer Quarter, 2012
"Playing. Games."
Course description: This course will explore the phenomenon of “play”. Play can be a complex and vague concept: at once essentially free and spontaneous, yet it is bound by rules; it is apparently unserious, yet often intensely serious, disciplined and engaging. In order to structure our investigations, we will engage ‘play’ on a thematic level in the context of selected British, German, Swiss and Austrian literary texts from antiquity to modern times. On a theoretical level we will engage the question of how the concept of ‘play’ functions within a fairly new direction of literary theory. We will draw on the writings of such philosophers and critics as Kant, Schiller, Huizinga, Lyotard, Heidegger, Gadamer and Foucault, among others. Towards the end of the course, students will analyze the parameters of a game (board game or computer game) in terms of the established theories in the field of either narratology or ludology.
Student learning goals
General method of instruction
Recommended preparation
Class assignments and grading
