Reacting to the Past

6 primary works

Threshold of Democracy

by Mark C. Carnes and Josiah Ober

Published 6 September 2005

The debates are informed by Plato's Republic, as well as excerpts from Thucydides, Xenophon, and other contemporary sources. By examining democracy at its threshold, the game provides the perspective to consider its subsequent evolution.

Reacting to the Past is a series of historical role-playing games that explore important ideas by re-creating the contexts that shaped them. Students are assigned roles, informed by classic texts, set in particular moments of intellectual and social ferment.

An award-winning active-learning pedagogy, Reacting to the Past improves speaking, writing, and leadership skills, promotes engagement with classic texts and history, and builds learning communities. Reacting can be used across the curriculum, from the first-year general education class to "capstone" experiences. A Reacting game can also function as the discussion component of lecture classes, or it can be enlisted for intersession courses, honors programs, and other specialized curricular purposes.

Rousseau, Burke, and Revolution in France, 1791

by Gary Kates and Mark C. Carnes

Published 24 August 2005

Reacting to the Past is a series of historical role-playing games that explore important ideas by re-creating the contexts that shaped them. Students are assigned roles, informed by classic texts, set in particular moments of intellectual and social ferment.

An award-winning active-learning pedagogy, Reacting to the Past improves speaking, writing, and leadership skills, promotes engagement with classic texts and history, and builds learning communities. Reacting can be used across the curriculum, from the first-year general education class to "capstone" experiences. A Reacting game can also function as the discussion component of lecture classes, or it can be enlisted for intersession courses, honors programs, and other specialized curricular purposes.

The Trial of Galileo

by Michael S. Petterson, Frederick Purnell, Jr., and Mark C. Carnes

Published 26 October 2007

In The Trial of Galileo the new science, as brilliantly propounded by Galileo Galilei, collides with the elegant cosmology of Aristotle, Aquinas and medieval Scholasticism. The game is set in Rome in the early decades of the seventeenth century. Most of the debates occur within the Holy Office, the arm of the papacy that supervises the Roman Inquisition. At times action shifts to the palace of Prince Cesi, founder of the Society of the Lynx-Eyed, which promotes the new science, and to the lecture halls of the Jesuit Collegio Romano. Some students assume roles as faculty of the Collegio Romano and the secular University of Rome, the Sapienza. Others are Cardinals who seek to defend the faith from resurgent Protestantism, the imperial ambitions of the Spanish monarch, the schemes of the Medici in Florence, and the crisis of faith throughout Christendom. Some embrace the "new cosmology", some denounce it, and still others are undecided. The issues range from the nature of faith and the meaning of the Bible to the scientific principles and methods as advanced by Copernicus, Kepler, Tycho Brahe, Giordano Bruno, and Galileo. Central texts include Aristotle's On the Heavens and Posterior Analytics; Galileo's Starry Messenger (1610), Letter to Grand Duchess Christina (1615) and Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems (1632); the declarations of the Council of Trent; and the Bible.

The Trial of Anne Hutchinson

by Mark C. Carnes and Michael P. Winship

Published 5 August 2005

By recreating one of the most tumultuous and significant episodes in early American history, The Trial of Anne Hutchinson: Liberty, Law, and Intolerance in Puritan New England illustrates the struggle between the followers and allies of John Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, and those of Anne Hutchinson, a strong-willed and brilliant religious dissenter.

Part of the "Reacting to the Past" series, this text consists of elaborate games in which students are assigned roles, informed by classic texts, set in particular moments of intellectual and social ferment. The game unfolds amidst a controversy that pushed Massachusetts to the brink of collapse and spurred a larger historical process that led to religious freedom and the modern concept of separation of church and state.

Defining a Nation

by Ainslie Embree and Mark C. Carnes

Published 6 June 2005

In the struggle to reconcile religious identity with nation building,Defining a Nation: India on the Eve of Independence, 1945 recreates one of the most intractable and important issues of the modern world.

Part of the "Reacting to the Past" series, this text consists of a game in which students are assigned roles, informed by classic texts, set in a particular moment of intellectual and social ferment. The game is set at Simla, in the foothills of the Himalayas, where the British viceroy has invited leaders of various religious and political constituencies to work out the future of Britain's largest colony.

Confucianism and the Succession Crisis of the Wanli Emperor, 1587

by Daniel K. Gardner and Mark C. Carnes

Published 14 October 2014

The game is set in the Hanlin Academy in Ming dynasty China. Most students are members of the Grand Secretariat of the Hanlin Academy, the body of top-ranking graduates of the civil service examination who serve as advisers to the Wanli emperor. Some Grand Secretaries are Confucian "purists", who hold that tradition obliges the emperor to name his first-born son as successor; others, in support of the most senior of the Grand Secretaries, maintain that it is within the emperor's right to choose his successor; and still others, as they decide this matter among many issues confronting the empire, continue to scrutinise the teachings of Confucianism for guidance. The game unfolds amidst the secrecy and intrigue within the walls of the Forbidden City, as scholars struggle to apply Confucian precepts to a dynasty in peril.