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:
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