NEWS AND Announcements 

SCall for Applications to Join the Reacting Consortium Board as an Alumni Rep

The Reacting Consortium Board is calling for applications to fill an Alumni Representative position. To qualify, applicants must have played a Reacting game as an undergraduate. New Board members will be selected at the March 2025 meeting of the Board.

The Responsibilities of Reacting Consortium Board Members Include:

• Be a member of the Reacting to the Past Consortium

• Regularly attend and participate in all board and assigned committee meetings 

• Serve on at least one RCB committee and offer to take on special assignments 

• Stay informed about the organization’s mission, services, policies, and programs 

• Work with Reacting staff to achieve organizational goals

• Donate to the Consortium at a level comfortable to the individual Board Member

This year, the Reacting Consortium Board is particularly interested in candidates with the following interests:

1. Diversity, equity and inclusion programming  

2. Fundraising for academic and other non-profit work

3. Connecting Reacting to educational spaces outside of academia such as secondary education and museums.

The Reacting Consortium benefits immensely from a Board membership with a diversity of personal identities, educational institutional affiliation, and experience with game design and gameplay. Nominations are not limited to faculty at post-secondary education institutions. We particularly welcome secondary education instructors. We encourage applicants to describe how they would contribute to and foster the Board’s diversity. 

Members should plan to attend the Annual Institute at Barnard College (planned yearly for early June) for board meetings as well as to participate in quarterly conference calls for the entire Board and smaller electronic committee meetings that will vary each year. Members-elect are welcome to observe the board meetings during the Annual Institute before their term begins in July.

Required Application Materials Due by December 1st, 2024:

• A 1-2 page letter describing your credentials (keeping in mind the list above) and reason for interest in joining the Board. 

• A brief 1-2 page CV.

Please submit application materials and any questions to the Chair of the Governance & Nominations Committee, Ethan Besser Fredrick, at Efredricke@gmail.com. 

See also our call for general board applications.

The Reacting Consortium Board is calling for applications to recruit individuals to fill up to three positions on the Board. New Board members will be selected at the March 2025 meeting of the Board.

The Responsibilities of Reacting Consortium Board Members Include:

Be a member of the Reacting to the Past Consortium

Regularly attend and participate in all board and assigned committee meetings

Serve on at least one RCB committee and offer to take on special assignments

Stay informed about the organization’s mission, services, policies, and programs

Work with Reacting staff to achieve organizational goals

Donate to the Consortium at a level comfortable to the individual Board Member

This year, the Reacting Consortium Board is particularly interested in candidates with the following skill sets:

Creating and executing initiatives to add to the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at academic institutions.

Grant writing, development, and other methods of fundraising for academic and non-profit organizations.

Creating and executing public history and/or digital humanities projects including exhibitions and programming in museums and other public-facing settings.

The Reacting Consortium benefits immensely from a Board membership with a diversity of personal identities, educational institutional affiliation, and experience with game design and gameplay. Nominations are not limited to faculty at post-secondary education institutions. We particularly welcome secondary education instructors. We encourage applicants to describe how they would contribute to and foster the Board’s diversity.

Members should plan to attend the Annual Institute at Barnard College (planned yearly for early June) for board meetings as well as to participate in quarterly conference calls for the entire Board and smaller electronic committee meetings that will vary each year. Members-elect are welcome to observe the board meetings during the Annual Institute before their term begins in July.

Required Application Materials Due by December 1st, 2024:

A 1-2 page letter describing your credentials (keeping in mind the list above) and reason for interest in joining the Board.

A brief 1-2 page CV.

Please submit application materials and any questions to the Chair of the Governance & Nominations Committee, Ethan Besser Fredrick, at Efredricke@gmail.com.

See also our call for Alumni Representatives

New from Reacting, 3 brand-new short and microgames have arrived just in time for the Fall 2024 semester! We're excited to announce these new additions to the Reacting library which can fit easily into a variety of classes!

SHORT GAMES:

Challenging Authority: Reformation Politics and Society, 1521-25

Challenging Authority examines how the Reformation moved from theological disputes to broad political and social change in the Holy Roman Empire in the early 1520s.

This game is designed to take students into three significant phases of the tumultuous first years of the Protestant Reformation: Martin Luther’s appearance before Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms in 1521, the three years of continuing reforms and challenges to secular rulers’ authority, and the tumultuous Peasants’ Revolt of 1524-25. In the course of the game students discover that challenges to authority, once underway, may take paths that no one anticipated and which shape history and society profoundly.

The Condition of England, 1841

Students learn about various competing ideologies of the early industrial revolution (in England) such as paternalism, Utilitarianism, free-trade/laissez-faire capitalism, and various radical reform movements (early socialism, feminism, etc.). Set in a London debating society, students will debate policy solutions to various intractable problems of the early industrial era.

The Condition of England examines the various competing ideologies of early industrial Britain such as paternalism, Utilitarianism, free trade/laissez faire capitalism (as represented by the Anti-Corn Law League), and early socialism and radicalism (as represented by a congeries of ex-Chartists, early feminists, and other radical reformers). Set in a London debating society, students will debate policy solutions to thorny problems such as treatment of the poor (the Poor Laws), whether agricultural protectionism or free trade should be the dominant economic policy (the Corn Laws), and whether there ought to be additional factory laws or whether the economic laws of supply and demand should be allowed to take their course. Other issues such as democratization of society, the role of women, temperance, and education, penal, and colonial reform are also addressed in the game. The possibilities and hindrances to effective coalition building among the various single-cause factions is also a key emphasis in the game.

MICROGAME:

Executive Order 9066: Japanese-Americans After Pearl Harbor

Executive Order 9066 simulates the fierce debates within the Roosevelt administration, in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor, whether to order the evacuation and internment of all people of Japanese heritage, including U.S. citizens.

Much of the story behind Executive Order 9066 is not well known. To be sure, most Americans, most influential journalists, and most of their political leaders strongly favored the mass evacuation and internment of all Japanese and Japanese-Americans. But there were strong dissents that arose from a fundamental respect for constitutional rights and opposition to American racism. Many of these dissenters were in Roosevelt’s Department of Justice, but there were also a few among the political leadership, most of whom would pay for their principles by sacrificing their careers. Will the game's Roosevelt follow history or change it?

For more information about microgames be sure to read our previous blog post: https://reactingconsortium.org/Blog/13373113

FEEDBACK FORM:

If you have recently used one of our new short games please fill out our feedback form. These responses will provide valuable information to game authors and the Reacting Consortium.

We are proud to announce the recipients of this year's Reacting awards and fellowships! These were first announced at this year's Annual Institute. Submissions for these awards open at the beginning of each year, read on to learn more about this year's winners!

Brilliancy Prize - Anne Caillaud, David Eick, and Janel Pettes Guikema

The 2023 Brilliancy Prize was awarded to historians Anne Caillaud, David Eick, and Janel Pettes Guikema of Grand Valley State University for their outstanding collaboration on a variety of materials aimed at expanding Reacting to the Past to other foreign language faculty. Not only have they collaborated on translations of several games, including The Enlightenment in Crisis: Diderot's Encyclopedié in a Parisian Salon and Modernism vs. Traditionalism: Art in Paris 1888-1889, they’ve authored scholarly articles and presented their work at the The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages and Modern Language Association. Moreover, they’ve created student- and faculty-facing guides for anyone interested in using Reacting to the past for language proficiency. In the words of their nominator, “they marked the way forward using rigorous and clear pedagogical principles, and supplied colleagues with the materials to make the journey.”

Dana Johnson Gorlin Fellowship - Ahuva Liberles

The Dana Johnson Gorlin Fellowship committee is thrilled to present this year’s award to Ahuva Liberles. As Director of the history teacher training program and member of the Jewish History faculty at Tel Aviv University, Dr. Liberles has expanded the reach of Reacting to the Past through her translations, her adaptation to critical questions in Israeli and Jewish history and culture, and her collaborative, international teaching. She has integrated Reacting into both interdisciplinary work at the University of Tel Aviv, and teaching at the University of Vienna. The committee was particularly impressed with Dr. Liberles’ use of Reacting in ethnically and religiously diverse classrooms to grapple with contemporary social issues in Israel, and on her use of Reacting pedagogy as a way of teaching Jewish history in a global context. In addition, she is making important contributions to Reacting by using it with diverse groups including both future secondary school teachers and senior citizens. Facilitating active engagement with histories and methods that foster engaged citizenship in the Middle East, her work also builds global ties among Reacting faculty, enabling our community to engage in the difficult conversations we need to be having.

Submissions are now open for this year's Reacting awards! Read on to learn more about these fantastic initiatives and how you can apply for them or nominate a deserving colleague.

Brilliancy Prize

The Brilliancy Prize seeks to recognize and publicize extraordinary creativity within the Reacting enterprise. Instituted in 2019, it’s presented to a particularly ingenious or creative idea or pedagogical practice that advances Reacting games, and comes with a $1,000 award, presented each year at the Annual Institute at Barnard College.   We would like to present the award at the Summer Institute at Barnard (June 6-9).

You can read more about the Brilliancy Prize and learn about past winners here, and if you want to apply, please send a letter of nomination (for yourself or someone else!) of no more than a three pages detailed description of the innovation being nominated and a rationale for why it is deserving of the award, along with any supporting materials, to current chair of the Brilliancy Prize Award Committee, Mary Jane Treacy at  maryjane.treacy@simmons.edu by 3/31/2024.

Dana Gorlin Johnson Fellowship

 The Dana Gorlin Johnson Fellowship is named in memory of Dana Johnson Gorlin, the founding administrator of the Reacting to the Past program. Without her work from 2002–while still an undergraduate student at Barnard–until 2014, the Reacting Consortium would not exist. You can read more about Dana here, as well as learn about past winners.

This fellowship is  awarded to a deserving faculty member, especially from a community college or public university, who best exemplifies Dana’s exceptional qualities of character and mind and who gives high promise of advancing Reacting. To apply or nominate someone for this award, please submit a two-page statement outlining the applicant's/nominee's previous experience with Reacting to the Past, as well as their potential for advancing the program, to Lucy Barnhouse at lbarnhouse@astate.edu by 3/31/2024.

Decisions will be made in late March and announced in April so award winners have time to plan to attend the Annual Institute on June 6-9!

A fresh crop of Reacting game materials have arrived just in time for finals!

We'll update this page as we get new files, check back later to stay up to date on the latest games and materials from the Reacting community.

Updated Games:

Rage Against the Machine: Technology, Rebellion, and the Industrial Revolution

Updated Gamebook, Role Sheets, Instructor's Manual, and Handouts.

The Jumonville Incident

Updated Gamebook, Role Sheets, Instructor's Manual, and Handouts.

Chicago, 1968

New Nametags for Roles

Kansas, 1999: Evolution or Creationism

Updated GB, IM, RS. Includes new link fixes, bribe mechanic, and focus on phonics.

Climate Change in Copenhagen

Powerpoints for introduction to issues and debriefing.

Community-Sourced Materials:

London 1854: Cesspits, Cholera, and Conflict over the Broad Street Pump London 1854: Cesspits, Cholera, and Conflict over the Broad Street Pump

Reformatted roles for improved classroom play.

Art In Paris: The Femme Pack

Includes roles that emphasize female artists and their ideas.

The Trial of Anne Hutchinson: Immigrant Pack

Includes indeterminate immigrant roles to expand discussion and fit larger classes.

The REB invites nominations and applications for positions on the Reacting Editorial Board.

The Reacting Editorial Board has three primary tasks:

· Working with authors, RC staff and UNC Press to move games from idea to published game.

· Establishing standards and expectations for traditional Reacting games (‘long-games’) and short games.

· Ensuring that Reacting to the Past games offer the best possible experience for students, faculty and staff.

REB members serve three-year renewable terms. Responsibilities include:

· Quarterly meetings (by zoom in spring, fall and winter, in person or zoom at the Annual Institute).

· Reviewing 2-4 game proposals per year (and reading review summaries of other game proposals).

· Participate in E-mail discussion at various times throughout the year.

· Other tasks as emerge during the year (represent the REB at a regional conference or the GDC, serve on temporary task forces, etc.)

To apply (or to nominate someone), please send a CV (short version is fine) and a letter of interest including your experience with Reacting to Kelly McFall at mcfallk@newmanu.edu. Experience with writing a Reacting game can be helpful in serving on the REB. But it is NOT required.

We will consider all applicants carefully. But we are especially interested in receiving applications from community members with experience in copywrite/permissions questions.

The Deadline for applications is 15 December. We’ll review the applications at our January meeting and notify applicants shortly after that meeting.

In case you missed it, UNC Press has begun publishing three new gamebooks for classroom use! Three newly published games and a are now available to order through the UNC Press website, with another on the way!

Reacting to the Past - UNC Press

These books are available in print and we hope to see them available in e-book format soon! Here's an overview of our newly published games which you can download the Instructor Manuals for today!

Augsburg, 1530
By: Emily Fisher Gray

Wrestling with the Reformation

As a member of the City Council of Augsburg in 1530, you will have to balance the competing demands of the citizens and the Emperor, while considering the implications of various Reformed positions for the city’s military defense, economic growth, and spiritual purity. Should you adopt the Augsburg Confession, a statement of principles presented during the 1530 Augsburg Reichstag by Martin Luther’s colleagues from Wittenberg? Or join the four “Tetrapolitan” cities that offered an alternate vision of reform influenced by Ulrich Zwingli? Or perhaps you should you support the Confutatio Pontificia, the strong rebuttal to the Augsburg Confession written by representatives of the Pope in Rome and endorsed by the Emperor? Decisions about religious practices in Augsburg could provoke a riot from reform-minded citizens or cause Emperor Charles V to make good on his promise to invade the city and revoke its independent charter. In this volatile environment, Augsburg needs allies, but alliances are dependent on the type of reform Augsburg chooses. As does Augsburg’s ability to feed its poor, protect its rapid proto-capitalist economic growth, and deal with the problem of Anabaptists infiltrating the community. The salvation of souls and Augsburg’s very survival are at stake.

View Augsburg, 1530

The Prado Museum's Expansion: The Diverse Art of Latin America
By: Bridget Franco

Murals, politics, race, Cubism, street art – and more! Join curators, art dealers, artists and patrons for a night of Latin American Art at the Prado Museum.

With an eye to diversifying its predominantly national Spanish-centered collection, the Prado Museum decides to curate a new gallery of Latin American paintings from the twentieth and early twenty-first century. What makes the art of Latin America unique? Which artists are considered representative of Latin American Art? What is the place of Latin American Art in the global art world today? To help answer these questions, the Prado Museum administration has set into motion a series of negotiation sessions to determine which paintings will be chosen for the new gallery. Artists and art dealers from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, and Uruguay have arrived in Madrid to advocate for their paintings' stylistic and historical importance. The Prado game provides a diachronic introduction to the diverse styles and movements (Cubism, Constructivism, Surrealism, Expressionism, Mexican Muralism, Indigenismo, Abstract Expressionism, Hyperrealism, Chicano Art, Street Art, and Naïf Art) that have influenced our understanding of Latin America art from the early 1900s to the new millennium. Taking on the roles of museum curators, docents, marketing directors, Patrons of the Arts, private art collectors, artists, and art dealers, players will learn how to identify the formal elements of Latin American painting and immerse themselves in the complex dynamics of the international art world.

View The Prado Museum Expansion: The Diverse Art of Latin America

The Crisis of Catiline
By: Bret Mulligan

It is the year when Marcus Tullius Cicero and Gaius Antonius Hybrida are consuls. Will the Republic live to see another?

Rome, 63 BC: a tumultuous year of urban and rural unrest, economic instability, sensational trials, and electoral misconduct. You are a Roman senator. Can you save the Republic…and yourself? At the center of the crisis stands Lucius Sergius Catilina or Catiline, a charismatic (and scandal-plagued) nobleman. Last year Catiline lost an election for the consulship, the highest office in Rome, to Marcus Tullius Cicero, a brilliant orator, canny politician, and “new man” (novus homo) — the first member of his family to reach the pinnacle of Roman politics. Now that Catiline has failed to be elected consul for a third time, rumors swirl that he and his followers plot assassinations and arson in Rome, while raising an army in the north. Are the rumors true — is Catiline conspiring to lead a revolution? Or have Catiline’s enemies conspired to thwart desperately needed social and economic reforms by slandering Catiline and his followers?

View Crisis of Catiline

Watergate, 1973-1974
By: John Parrish

"But if there be no accountability, another President will feel free to do as he chooses. The next time there may be no watchman in the night.” -House Judiciary Committee member James Mann, 1974

In Watergate, 1973-74, students experience the unfolding of America’s most dramatic constitutional crisis of the 20th century: the investigation of the Watergate burglary and its subsequent cover-up. Beginning in July 1973, as the point where the scandal’s main facts had finally been made public, students will portray members of Congress, the news media, and the Nixon Administration as they struggle to cope with the emerging crisis. The key to resolving the crisis are the president’s secret White House tapes – Nixon invoked questions of high constitutional principle to withhold access to the tapes from the special prosecutor and Congress – but many of his critics suspected he was merely trying to conceal evidence of his guilt. With the world’s most powerful person barricading himself within the walls of the White House and threatening to take the constitutional order itself hostage to ensure his political survival, how could well-intentioned leaders pursue truth and justice without risking collateral damage to the nation’s foundational principles and institutions? Watergate gives students the chance to understand the importance of evidence and disciplined verification in resolving conflicts of belief and value, and to wrestle with the often-frustrating complexity of using such processes to decide, under conditions of profound uncertainty, some of the most consequential questions of a nation’s political life.

*To help facilitate this transition, we are leaving the GUR versions of these games on the Reacting Consortium library until the end of the semester. Please plan accordingly!

Over the past two months, the Reacting Consortium has had the privilege of hosting two remarkable virtual events that introduced innovative practices aimed at enhancing the accessibility and safety features of our games!

Jamie Lerner-Brecher's presentation on Universal Design and Allen White's presentation on adding Safety Tools have served as valuable resources in our ongoing efforts to make Reacting games as inclusive as possible.

Although these presentations were originally delivered live via Zoom, we are excited to announce that edited recordings are now available for purchase, with an exclusive discount offered to Reacting Consortium members!

By making these recordings available, we aim to promote continuous learning and improvement within the Reacting Consortium community. We are committed to supporting the development of games that are not only engaging but also foster inclusivity and safety.

To access these recordings and explore our library of past events and tutorials, please visit our Event Recordings page. We look forward to continuing this journey towards creating more accessible and secure gaming experiences for all! If you have any suggestions for how we can make Reacting more inclusive please contact us at reacting@barnard.edu we would love to hear from you!

The Reacting Consortium Board is calling for Applications to recruit individuals to fill up to four positions on the Board. New Board members will be selected at the March 2024 meeting of the Board.

Responsibilities of Reacting Consortium Board Members include:

• Be a member of the Reacting to the Past Consortium

• Regularly attend and participate in all board and assigned committee meetings 

• Serve on at least one RCB committee and offer to take on special assignments 

• Stay informed about the organization’s mission, services, policies, and programs 

• Work with Reacting staff to achieve organizational goals

• Donate to the Consortium at a level comfortable to the individual Board Member
  
  

This year, the Reacting Consortium Board is particularly interested in candidates with the following skill sets:

1. Creating and executing initiatives to add to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at academic institutions. 

2. Grant writing, development, and other methods of fundraising for academic and non-profit organizations. 

3. Creating and executing public history and/or digital humanities projects including exhibitions and programming in museums and other public-facing settings.
   
   

The Reacting Consortium benefits immensely from a Board membership with a diversity of personal identities, educational institutional affiliation, and experience with game design and gameplay. Nominations are not limited to faculty at post-secondary education institutions. We particularly welcome secondary education instructors . We encourage applicants to describe how they would contribute to and foster the Board’s diversity. 

Members should plan to attend the Annual Institute at Barnard College (planned yearly for early June) for board meetings as well as to participate in quarterly conference calls for the entire Board and smaller electronic committee meetings that will vary each year. Members-elect are welcome to observe the board meetings during the Annual Institute before their term begins in July.

Required Application Materials due by December 15th, 2023:

• A 1-2 page letter describing your credentials (keeping in mind the list above) and reason for interest in joining the Board. 

• A brief 1-2 page CV.

Please submit application materials and any questions to the Chair of the Governance & Nominations Committee, Ethan Besser Fredrick, at Efredricke@gmail.com.