Representatives from Six Colleges Gathered on Campus for the First Reacting to the Past Training Conference, July 22-25

New York, NY, July 31, 2002—The Wanli emperor of Ming China, played by Trinity College mathematics professor Melanie Stein, enters the north tower of Sulzberger Hall’s 17th floor, which is filled with Han-lin Academicians, played by professors and students from six colleges. The Academicians, scholar-bureaucrats who have excelled at progressively more difficult and intense examinations of Confucian texts, have been reminded that there is to be no levity in the presence of the emperor and they obey accordingly. The issues to be discussed are the Manchu attacks to the north, the beginnings of trade with the Portuguese in the south, and the flooding of the Yellow River. The Academicians present memorials – advisory papers – to the emperor, justifying the wisdom of the advice with citations from Confucius’s Analects. The debate revolves around damming, taxation, and military buildup, but there is another issue clearly on everyone’s mind, which is disallowed from discussion.

Meanwhile, in the south tower of Sulzberger Hall, the same scenario is playing out with David Cohen, mathematics professor from Smith College, as the emperor. He is wearing a mortarboard and a towel. Cohen starts to sit, then stands, and the Academicians, who cannot sit until the emperor sits, follow suit. Jokes are made and in general this room is more raucous than the first, but still maintains the constant citation of Confucius and historical context.

These two groups are playing a truncated version of an innovative pedagogy developed by Barnard history professor Mark Carnes, called Reacting to the Past, which uses complex role-playing historical games to immerse students in the historic settings and conflicts that sparked classic texts. From July 22 to July 25, professors and students from Barnard, Trinity, Smith, Queens College, Loras College, Queensborough Community College, and Pace University gathered for the first training conference to learn how to play and design Reacting games. Last year Barnard held a conference announcing the games to spark interest at other schools. All the schools represented at this conference are planning to implement customized versions of Reacting to the Past next year.

The game described above, "Confucianism and the Succession Crisis of the Wanli Empire," is just one of many games designed by Carnes and other Barnard faculty since Reacting’s official inception into Barnard’s First Year Seminar Program in 1999. The other games include "The Threshold of Democracy: Athens in 403 BC;" "The Trial of Anne Hutchinson, 1637;" "Rousseau, Burke and Revolution in France, 1791;" "Hindu and Muslim Nationalism, Gandhi, and the Making of a Nation on the Eve of Independence in India, 1945;" and "Freud, Jung and the Nature of the Unconscious." The pedagogy, which received a Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) grant from the U.S. Department of Education, relies exclusively on role-playing to facilitate a student’s exploration of cultures, controversies, and historical moments of importance. The instructor does not participate in the games and is present mainly to ensure the historical credibility of the discussions. This eliminates the instructor as the primary source of information and allows the students to explore for themselves the issues at hand. Students are assigned roles for the month-long games.

In the four-day conference, however, the participants played two games for two days each, the other game being "The Threshold of Democracy."

"I love it," said Frank Kirkpatrick, Professor of Religion and Dean of the First-Year Program at Trinity College. "It’s much more intense than last year."

In his lecture on designing a Reacting game, Carnes explained he feels there are three qualifications needed for a game to be successful: great texts, high liminal potential, and elements of social conflict and drama. "Great texts," according to Carnes, "are complex, with lots of difficult ideas. They also should have multiple commentaries in order to allow different voices in the game to interact."

Without employing great texts, he said, "Students gain debating skills, but not much content." Having high liminal potential means that students can enter into a specific space and place in time. "Setting the games in the past helps them break out of themselves," Carnes said. Finally, elements of social conflict and drama allow students to enter into different psychological states and encourage development of rhetorical skills.

Also involved in Reacting games are preceptors, students who have taken the course before and who act as advisors to the current students. Preceptors edit students’ writing and advise them on strategy.

"It was the first time I tutored someone my own age," said Caroline McHale ’03, preceptor for the conference. "When I edited papers, I was forced to read critically and pick them apart. It helped me in my own writing."

Violet Durollari ’02 agreed, "The best way to learn is to teach someone else."

In the beginning of August, preceptors Durollari, Dana Johnson '04, and Nikki Thompson '03 will travel to Dubuque, Iowa, to guide 15 Loras faculty members from various departments through the French Revolution and India games.

"Those who have attended Reacting conferences," said Carnes, who will not travel to Dubuque, "are stunned by the leadership, knowledge, and articulateness of the student preceptors."

Carnes first began to work on what became Reacting to the Past in 1996 in his own classes. In 1997 he received the three-year FIPSE grant to bring in scholars from other disciplines. Since then there have been 55 classes and 170 Reacting games played at Barnard.

"I was tired of teaching classes where none of the students talked," said Carnes on the roots of Reacting to the Past. "I was trying to think of new ways to engage them."

Although Barnard uses the games for first-year students, they do not necessarily have to be used that way. Trinity will use them for first-year students, but Smith will have two sections – one for seniors and juniors and another for first-year students. Loras is making the games mandatory within the first three semesters of study, while Pace will integrate the games into existing courses.
Even within Barnard’s faculty there are different ways of approaching the games. Each participant has certain goals to achieve in the class and a point system around which grades can be based. The goals generally involve persuading other characters to act in certain ways. These can range from a vote to martyring oneself. Herb Sloan, Barnard history professor and co-host for the conference, takes a different approach to the point system than Carnes. "[Carnes] knows the rules much better than I do," said Sloan. "I feel the students are motivated enough in playing the game. They don’t need me to help them focus on winning."

Non-academic reasons for installing the games also vary from school to school. Barnard praises the ability of the games to help students empathize with others, but Pace, which has many commuting students, hopes they will help build community.

"According to student self-reports," writes Barnard psychology professor Steve Stroessner in a three-year, FIPSE-funded assessment of the games, "the pedagogy...facilitated the development of an appreciation of multiple points of view on controversial topics. These effects were confirmed and extended in studies designed to compare ‘Reacting to the Past’ seminars with students from other seminars and over time. These studies showed that the pedagogy produced higher self-esteem, empathy, and belief that people can change over time and across contexts. Rhetorical skills were developed through the seminar, but writing skills, measured both at the time of [first year seminars] and later, did not appear to be negatively impacted."

As the China game progressed, it came to be known that the emperor wanted to name his second son as his successor. As the participants knew from their 80-page packets – filled with game rules, historical context, and selections from primary sources – and from reading the Analects, many in Ming China considered this possibility to be a profound violation of the Confucian principles that were the backbone of the culture. There were certain Academicians who protested the notion of a second son successor adamantly, while others felt deferring to the authority of the emperor was more important. This debate soon dominated all other issues in each group.

By the end of the games, the most virulent enemy of the second son had been executed in both groups. In one of the groups, there was a failed assassination attempt on the second son, something Sloan had never witnessed before. In the other, the emperor made one of his opponents "disappear."

Afterwards, group participants were quite complimentary about Reacting to the Past.

"I arrived as a great skeptic," said Michael Rosenfeld, Professor of History at Pace University. "But this reminded me what it was like to be a student."

"You have to think on two levels," said Smith rising junior Ariadne Nevin. "First, you have to be in the game, be part of the game. But then you have to be constantly thinking about and working with ideas you don’t quite understand."

"It’s interesting," said Dan Gardner, Professor of Chinese History at Smith College. "It’s different from traditional teaching and learning. It puts students inside a character and teaches them that ideas are not just ideas; they get enacted in the world."

To see a video of a Reacting to the Past game in action, visit the Reacting page on the Barnard Electronic Archive and Teaching Laboratory web site.

Contact: Petra Tuomi, Office of Public Affairs, 212-854-7907
James Griffith, Office of Public Affairs, 212-854-2037