SUMMER OF REACTING
Part I  June 2021

The board and administration of the Reacting Consortium have decided to offer a variety of games over the course of the summer, allowing faculty around the country (and the world) the opportunity to play multiple games, and to experience the Reacting pedagogy online. Our hope is that by providing a broad array of games and methods for using them, faculty will be able to plan more effectively and confidently for the coming academic year, no matter the circumstances.

This summer includes three conference periods:
Summer of Reacting - Part I (June)
Game Development Conference (early July)
Summer of Reacting - Part II (late July - mid August)

The Reacting Consortium is committed to diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and belonging. These values inform our work to foster an accessible community, our approach to game development, and our determination to contend with “big ideas.” Thanks to our Fundraising Committee and the generosity of our community, we have reserved a few funded spots in the Summer of Reacting for instructors who are teaching at minority serving institutions (HBCUs, Tribal Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, etc). If you are interested in applying for one of these spots, please send an email to [email protected] with the subject line “Funded SOR” for more information by May 12. Even if the general spots for this event are sold out, these funded spots may still be available. Please apply and share with colleagues.

MORE ABOUT REACTING TO THE PAST

REGISTRATION

Become a member here. Check to see if your school has institutional membership here. If you have questions about your individual membership status or membership generally, email our membership coordinator at [email protected].

  • For current members of the Reacting Consortium in good standing. The member rate is $100 per game.

  • For anyone not currently a member of the Reacting Consortium. The non-member rate is $150 per game.

GAME SESSIONS

We are offering two games each week, with one game suitable for instructors of all experience levels, and the other intended for those with some Reacting or subject matter experience. You can select as many sessions as you like. Please note all times are Eastern.

  • EUROPE ON THE BRINK 1914: THE JULY CRISIS

    EUROPE ON THE BRINK 1914: THE JULY CRISIS

    June 7-10, 2021
    Gamemaster: John Moser
    Recommended for all instructors.

    June 7 (Mon) 1-4 PM
    June 8-10 (Tues - Thurs) 11 AM - 12:30PM; 2:30 - 4 PM (Eastern)

    The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914 by a Serbian nationalist has set off a crisis in Europe. Since the Congress of Vienna in 1815, peace had largely prevailed among the Great Powers, preserved through international conferences and a delicate balance of power. Now, however, interlocking alliances are threatening to plunge Europe into war, as Austria-Hungry is threatening war against Serbia. Germany is allied with Austria-Hungary, while Russia views itself as the protector of Serbia. Britain is torn between fear of a German victory and a Russian one. France supports Russia but also needs Britain on its side. Can war be avoided one more time? "Europe on the Brink" plunges students into the July Crisis as representatives of the European powers. What choices will they make?

    Price $0.00

  • HENRY VIII AND THE REFORMATION  PARLIAMENT

    HENRY VIII AND THE REFORMATION PARLIAMENT

    June 7-9, 2021
    Gamemaster: Pat Coby
    Recommended for experienced Reacting instructors, and specialists.

    June 7 -9 (Mon - Wed) 12 - 1:30 PM; 2 - 3:30 PM daily (Eastern)

    This game transforms students into English lords and commoners during the tumultuous years of 1529 to 1536. The king has summoned Parliament in the hope that it somehow will find the means to invalidate his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, thus freeing him to marry his new love, Lady Anne Boleyn. Matters of state also apply, because Henry has no male heir to carry on the Tudor line. But will Parliament be content with solving the king’s marital and dynastic problems? Some in Parliament wish to use the royal divorce to disempower the English church, to sever its ties to papal Rome, and to change it doctrinally from Catholicism to Lutheranism. Others oppose the divorce, oppose secular supremacy and independence from Rome, and oppose this heretical creed filtering in from the continent. The king himself is ambivalent about the reformation unleashed by his divorce campaign, and so conservatives are loosed to prosecute reformers as heretics, while reformers seek to prosecute conservatives as traitors. At issue in the game is the clash of four contending ideas: traditionalist Christianity, reformist Protestantism, Renaissance humanism, and Machiavellian statecraft. Depending on the outcome of this contest, the modern nation-state will, or will not, be born.

    Price $0.00

  • PEACEMAKING 1919: THE PEACE CONFERENCE AT VERSAILLES

    PEACEMAKING 1919: THE PEACE CONFERENCE AT VERSAILLES

    June 14-16, 2021
    Gamemaster: Rebecca Livingstone
    Recommended for experienced Reacting instructors, and area specialists.

    June 14-16 (Mon - Wed) 12-1:30PM; 2 - 3:30 PM daily (Eastern)

    Set in Paris, 1919, "Peacemaking" places students in the complicated and politically fraught peace conference that will bring an end to the Great War. Students represent nations as they seek to bring about peace not only for the present, but also the future. Students will grapple with complex ideas about: peace, the League of Nations, and tensions about international cooperation and national sovereignty; just war, self-aggrandizing war, and acceptable conduct of war; national self-interest versus the greater good; collective security or the balance of power; self-determination, nationalism, democracy and imperialism; moral responsibility versus legal culpability in war; disarmament; the rights and treatment of minority populations; the rising fears about Bolshevism. For this game, students work primarily in topical subcommittees charged with recommending course of action to the Council of Five. This council comprised of the leaders of the Great Powers determine the final draft of the peace treaty, choosing to accept, amend, or reject the recommendations of their subordinates and/or insert their own conditions. The result will be a treaty by many hands, many visions, and many competing interests. The immediate question will be whether the treaty will be acceptable to the individual nations, particularly Germany. The long-term question will be whether or not the treaty brings about the peace its creators hoped for.

    Price $0.00

  • THE TRIAL OF ANNE HUTCHINSON: LIBERTY, LAW, AND INTOLERANCE IN PURITAN NEW ENGLAND

    THE TRIAL OF ANNE HUTCHINSON: LIBERTY, LAW, AND INTOLERANCE IN PURITAN NEW ENGLAND

    June 17-18, 2021
    Gamemaster: Charlotte Carrington-Farmer
    Recommended for all instructors.

    June 17 -18 (Thurs - Fri) 12 - 2PM; 2:30 - 4:30 PM daily (Eastern)

    "The Trial of Anne Hutchinson" recreates one of the most tumultuous and significant episodes in early American history: the struggle between the followers and allies of John Winthrop, Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and those of Anne Hutchinson, a strong-willed and brilliant religious dissenter. The controversy pushed Massachusetts to the brink of collapse and spurred a significant exodus. The puritans who founded Massachusetts were poised between the Middle Ages and the modern world, and in many ways, they helped to bring the modern world into being. The Trial of Anne Hutchinson plunges participants into a religious world that will be unfamiliar to many of them. Yet the puritans’ passionate struggles over how far they could tolerate a diversity of religious opinions in a colony committed to religious unity were part of a larger historical process that led to religious freedom and the modern concept of separation of church and state. Their vehement commitment to their liberties and fears about the many threats these faced were passed down to the American Revolution and beyond.

    Price $0.00

  • Wrestling with the Reformation: Augsburg, 1531

    Wrestling with the Reformation: Augsburg, 1531

    June 21-22, 2021
    Gamemaster: Emily Fisher Gray
    Recommended for experienced Reacting instructors, and area specialists.

    June 21 - 22 (Mon - Tues) 11 AM - 12PM; 1-4PM daily (Eastern)

    This game brings you right into the place where difficult religious, political, social and economic decisions were made: the City Council of Augsburg, a free imperial city caught between the demands of the people for thorough religious reform and the will of a Holy Roman Emperor who intended to quash dangerous dissent. As a member of the City Council of Augsburg in 1531, 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 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.

    Price $0.00

  • Rosseau, Burke, and Revolution in France, 1791

    Rosseau, Burke, and Revolution in France, 1791

    June 23-25, 2021
    Gamemaster: Gretchen Galbraith
    Recommended for all instructors.

    June 23 - 25 (Wed-Fri) 11AM - 12 PM; 1PM - 2:30PM daily (Eastern)

    "Rousseau, Burke, and Revolution in France, 1791" plunges students into the intellectual, political, and ideological currents that surged through revolutionary Paris in the summer of 1791. Students are leaders of major factions within the National Assembly (and in the streets outside) as it struggles to create a constitution amidst internal chaos and threats of foreign invasion. Will the king retain power? Will the priests of the Catholic Church obey the “general will” of the National Assembly or the dictates of the pope in Rome? Do traditional institutions and values constitute restraints on freedom and individual dignity or are they its essential bulwarks? Are slaves, women, and Jews entitled to the “rights of man”? Is violence a legitimate means of changing society or of purging it of dangerous enemies? In wrestling with these issues, students consult Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s "Social Contract" and Edmund Burke’s "Reflections on the Revolution in France," among other texts.

    Price $0.00

REGISTRANT INFO

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