Kudos and congratulations to Professor Pamela Walker, ZC Carleton Faculty affiliate and ZC Advisory Board member, for winning (with Martha Attridge Bufton, Interdisciplinary Studies Librarian) the inaugural Brilliancy Prize from the Reacting to the Past Consortium at Barnard College (Columbia University).
Read the official Carleton Newsroom story here: https://newsroom.carleton.ca/story/playing-games-pays-off-carleton-ups-the-ante/
Pioneered in the late 1990s by Mark C. Carnes, Professor of History at Barnard College, Reacting to the Past (RTTP) consists of elaborate games, set in the past, in which students are assigned roles informed by classic texts in the history of ideas. The RTTP curriculum seeks to draw students into the past, promote engagement with big ideas, and improve intellectual and academic skills. Reacting roles do not have a fixed script and outcome: students must devise their own means of expressing their character’s ideas persuasively, in papers, speeches, or other public presentations as well as pursue a course of action they think will help them win the game.
Each year The Reacting Consortium and Barnard College hosts a Summer Institute which introduces new ways (games) of approaching well-known topics, and through which several hundred instructors and administrators are trained in the Reacting pedagogy.
Martha Attridge Bufton and Professor Pamela Walker collaborated to create a character for a librarian in Greenwich Village 1913: Maud Malone. A New York City librarian, union organizer, and suffragette. Maud is both a creative idea and a pedagogical practice. By embedding Maud in the game—rather than relegating Martha to a traditional “one shot” library research session—they created a new role for librarians in the Reacting pedagogy to support the acquisition of core scholarly information seeking competencies. Maud appeared during game sessions to offer research support, help students formulate research questions and navigate the library resources.
