Reacting to the Past

Reacting to the Past consists of elaborate games, set in the past, in which students are assigned roles informed by classic texts in the history of ideas. Class sessions are run entirely by students; instructors advise and guide students and grade their oral and written work. It seeks to draw students into the past, promote engagement with big ideas, and improve intellectual and academic skills (http://reacting.barnard.edu).

In the fall of 2011 a group of 25 UAB Freshmen played the Reacting game "Rousseau, Burke, and the Revolution in France, 1791. In this game the conservative partisans of Edmund Burke square off against the radical champions of Jean Jacques Rousseau in a battle to control the National Assembly and the fate of France.