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Engines of Agency and Affect: A Model for Interactive Histories Item Info

This thesis presents a framework for interactive histories that presents an argument for using interactive media (principally, games) as a form of historical writing. It argues that when historical knowledge is embedded within an interactive structure, it is as a historical problem space consisting of game and narrative mechanics. It provides a library of historical and digital humanities methodologies that allows a historian to derive historical aesthetics and agencies from their historical research, then adapt their knowledge as game and narrative mechanics. In doing so, the historian also adopts the practices of a game designer; they become a “developer-historian”. When players engage their agency with game and narrative mechanics, they encounter the designer’s historical-rhetorical claims about the nature of historical reality. By interrogating these claims, they are brought “within the circle” of historical and ethnographic practice, and expand their historical imagination and understanding.

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Title:
Engines of Agency and Affect: A Model for Interactive Histories
Creator:
Chapman, Noah Ryan
Date Created:
2023
Degree Awarded:
Master of Arts with Specialization in Digital Humanities
Subjects:
History -- Study and teaching
Geographical Focus:
Digital
Supporting Materials:
n/a
Description:
This thesis presents a framework for interactive histories that presents an argument for using interactive media (principally, games) as a form of historical writing. It argues that when historical knowledge is embedded within an interactive structure, it is as a historical problem space consisting of game and narrative mechanics. It provides a library of historical and digital humanities methodologies that allows a historian to derive historical aesthetics and agencies from their historical research, then adapt their knowledge as game and narrative mechanics. In doing so, the historian also adopts the practices of a game designer; they become a “developer-historian”. When players engage their agency with game and narrative mechanics, they encounter the designer’s historical-rhetorical claims about the nature of historical reality. By interrogating these claims, they are brought “within the circle” of historical and ethnographic practice, and expand their historical imagination and understanding.
Source
Preferred Citation:
Chapman, Noah Ryan. Engines of Agency and Affect: A Model for Interactive Histories. 2023. Carleton University, Master of Arts with Specialization in Digital Humanities.
Reference Link:
https://cuhistory.github.io/grads/items/hist_351.html
Rights
Rights:
Copyright the author, all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.
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