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The
Sixth Annual Reacting to the Past Conference
Convenes Today at Barnard College
(New York,
August 2, 2006) This year, nearly 100 faculty, administrators,
and students from 43 different colleges and universities throughout
the country, as well as representatives from the American
University in Cairo, will gather on the Barnard campus from
August 2 - 5 for the sixth annual Reacting to the Past conference.
This year’s conference will be primarily devoted to playing
mini-versions of “Reacting to the Past” games, such
as “The Threshold of Democracy: Athens in 403 B.C.,”
and “Confucianism and the Succession Crisis of the Wanli
Emperor, 1587,” among others. Three new games will also
be tested at the conference: “Forest Diplomacy,”
involving the Indian-colonist convergence in the mid-18th
century; “Darwin and the Copley Medal,” a history/science
game; and “Shakespeare/Marlowe,” the conference’s
first game in the history of literature. In addition to these
game sessions, there will be discussions on liberal arts education,
student motivation, and the problems and possibilities of
the “Reacting” pedagogy.
Reacting
to the Past was invented by Barnard's Ann Whitney Olin Professor
of History Mark Carnes as a way to engage his first-year students.
The innovative program involves students adopting the personae
of characters in historyfrom politicians in Ancient Greece
to Puritans in New England — with the goal of understanding
upheavals in history through the debates of the time.
Amanda
Houle '06 was a student at Barnard College when she took the
“Reacting” class she describes in a article published
in Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning. Click
here to read the article.
For more
information about the conference, please
visit the Reacting to the Past website.
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