The lights are on
Rice University in Houston, TX, which is not a video game design school, is offering a class titled Scandinavian Fantasy Worlds: Old Norse Sagas and Skyrim. It's only available for one semester and is described as such:
This course has two goals. First, it introduces students to fantasy as both psychological concept and driving force in gamer culture; and second, using these paradigms, it considers how and why medieval Scandinavia serves as a locus of modern Anglo-American fantasy. To these ends, students will read selections from Old Norse and Old Icelandic sagas (in translation) as they play different quests within Skyrim.
While the course begins by identifying moments of intersection between the worlds of the sagas and of Skyrim (inclement environments, supernatural figures, mythologies), the course is not in any means meant to map the former onto the latter. The purpose of establishing these connections is to then consider how elements of medieval Scandinavian culture have been taken out of historical milieu and literary context, morphed into unfamiliar shape, and appropriated towards other fantastic pursuits.
We’ll consider the political saga of Skyrim, with its emphasis on Empire and rebellion, as pursuits made possible by way of Scandinavia in order to think through what Scandinavian fantasy worlds are really about and why they resonate with contemporary Anglo-American culture.
Enrollment is limited, so sign up now!
[via Eurogamer]
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haha that's really cool.
Wow- awesome course.
it helps you get your foosh-ro-degree! (hold for groans)
Fail the assignment, and you'll never be an adventurer like me.
instead of the dog eating your homework you can just tell your professor you took an arrow to the knee
That would be awesome lol
Wow!!!!! Just wow!!!
Wow, that seems interesting. I wish there were more courses like that. Especially cause it brings up a good point of how we take an older culture and kinda morph it and integrate it into our current culture.
Pretty cool. Skyrim is based off Scandinavia and Norse mythology, which is one of the main reasons why I like the world of Skyrim. You know you're a mythology nerd when you make a connection between an unimportant NPC's name to a dragonslayer from Norse mythology.
My school never had such cool classes. And taking them would have done me just as good as taking normal classes.
It's a shame some of us have long since finished school because I really think this is going to become more common. Even though I have just Portal and now Skyrim for class material, I am extremely jealous.
It is good to know the education at Rice is top notch.
Shame Skyrim never caught my interest. Couldn't bring myself to care enough about the world to analyze it. I hope stuff like this becomes as common as dissecting good Books and Movies, and I offer up most of the Persona games for a literary analysis class. I'd write up a long essay on how the three Persona of the main character of Persona 3 give him character development without a single line of dialogue from him if that class happened and I got in it.
Behold! The benefits of gaming for education! Man, I love seeing stuff like this. :)
It's so cool to see game related classes popping up. Hope it spreads.