Play 3700-AL-PLAY-QSP
Why do we play, and why do animals play? Which activities, endeavors, attitudes, shapes and designs would we be prepared to describe as playful, and which of these is playful because it expresses something fundamental about what it is to be human? What do we mean when we say that play is sometimes dead serious? These old questions seem especially important now in a “gameful” world in which “organizations, practices, products, and services are infused with elements from games and play” (Walz and Deterding). Do the new forms of play tied to electronic and digital media really amount to new ways of playing, even if sometimes “darker” ones? Can our own experiences with games, sports, and growing up help us to formulate questions about play and whether its meaning has shifted? Perhaps the right question to ask is whether some kinds of play are really genuine or not, but what is play anyway? In order to try to answer such questions, we will study some of the major philosophical approaches to play, as well as artistic portrayals, both current and “classical,” always thinking about what it is about play that makes us human.
1. Defining Play: The Main Questions
READING: Johann Huizinga: Homo Ludens, Foreword and I-III (pp. 1-76)
Stuart Brown: Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination,
and Invigorates the Soul. Part I (1-73)
2. Irrational, Dark, and Existential Play I.:
Dostoevsky, Pascal and Science Fiction
READING: Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Player
Blaise Pascal: Pensées (selections)
Film Discussion: Blade Runner (1982, dir. Ridley Scott)
3. Irrational, Dark, and Existential Play II.
Nietzsche, Hemingway and Psychology
READING: Friedrich Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy (selections); Thus Spoke Zarathustra (selections)
Ernest Hemingway: Death in the Afternoon
Brian Sutton Smith: The Ambiguity of Play. Ch. 5-6 (pp. 74-111)
Film Discussion: The Seventh Seal (1957, dir. Ingmar Bergman)
4. Play as Rational Politics, Art as Play: Schiller's Humanistic Theory of the Play-Drive
READING: Friedrich Schiller: Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1-8)
John Dewey: Art and Experience (selections)
Jane McGonigal: Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better, and How They Can Change the World (19-119)
5. Play as Rational Politics, Art as Play: Schiller's Humanistic Theory of the Play-Drive
READING: Friedrich Schiller: Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1-8)
Film Discussion: The Hunger Games (2012-25, dir. Francis Lawrence, Gary Ross)
6. Play and Education (The Moral Value of Play)
READING: Plato: The Republic (Bks. 6-7)
Diane Ackerman: Deep Play (1-2, pp 3-48)
Stanley Cavell: The Claim of Reason (Ch. XI. Rules and Reasons, 292-313)
Film Discussion: The Queen's Gambit (2020, Scott Frank, Allen Scott); The Wolf Pack (2015, dir. Crystal Moselle)
7. Work as Play, Play as Work: Can Gaming Change the World?
READING: Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness
Jane McGonigal: Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better, and How They Can Change the World (219-345)
Film Discussion: Work Hard, Play Hard (2011, dir. Carmen Losmann)
8. Mathematics as Play
READING: Hermann Hesse: Glasperlenspiel (selections)
Philip J. Davis, Reuben Hersh: The Mathematical Experience (Ch.1-2)
Timothy Gowers: Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction (1-3)
Type of course
Prerequisites (description)
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
familiarity with philosophical approaches and methodologies applied in conceptualizing issues about play; identifying problems and preparing research agendas appropriately addressed relying on these methodologies; close-reading and analyzing artworks in the light of philosophical problems
Assessment criteria
Presentations; participation; writing
Bibliography
Bataille, Georges. 1955. Lascaux, or the Birth of Art
Beckett, Samuel. 1957. Endgame
Berne, Eric. 1964. Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis
Brown, Stuart. M.D., and Christopher Vaughan. 2009. Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul
Caillois, Roger. 1961. Man, Play, and Games
Castiglione, Baldesar. 1528. The Book of the Courtier
Cavell, Stanley. 1981. Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage; The Claim of Reason
Costikyan, Greg. 2013. Uncertainty in Games. Playful Thinking
Crawford, Matthew B. 2016. The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction
Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály. 1975. Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: the Experience of Play in Work and Games
Denis Diderot: Salons.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. 2008. Notes from the Underground and The Gambler
Hardy, G.H. 1940. A Mathematician's Apology
Hersh, David. 1981. The Mathematical Experience
Hesse, Hermann. 1943. The Glass Bead Game (Magister Ludi)
Hofstadter, Douglas R. 1979. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Huizinga, Johan. 1944. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture
James, William. 1879. The Sentiment of Rationality
Kawabata, Yasunari. 1951. The Master of Go
McGonigal, Jane. 2011. Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World
Miller, David L. 1970. Gods and Games: Toward a Theology of Play
Plato. The Laws
Rath, Sura P, and Guest Editor. 2018. “Game, Play, Literature: An Introduction.” http://www.jstor.org.oxy.idm.oclc.org/stable/pdf/3189679.pdf.
Schiller, Friedrich. 1795. On the Aesthetic Education of Man, In a Series of Letters
Sicart, Miguel. 2017. Play Matters. Boston
Snow, Edward, 1997. Inside Bruegel: The Play of Images in Children's Games
Stromberg, Peter G. 2009. Caught in Play: How Entertainment Works on You
Sudnow, David. 1983. Pilgrim in the Microworld
Sutton-Smith, Brian. 1997. The Ambiguity of Play
Talwalkar, Presh. 2014. The Joy of Game Theory: An Introduction to Strategic Thinking
Walz, Steffen P., and Sebastian Deterding, eds. 2014. The Gameful World: Approaches, Issues, Applications
Zweig, Stefan. 1942. Chess: A Novella
FILMOGRAPHY
Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938)
It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, 1934)
Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)
Work Hard - Play Hard. (Carmen Lossman, 2011)
The Wolf Pack (Crystall Moselle, 2015)
The Surrounding Game (Cole D. Pruitt, Will Lockhart, 217)
The Hunger Games (Gary Ross, 2012)
The Last of Us (Naughty Dog, 2023)
The Squid Game (Hwang Dong-hyuk, 2021)
WORKS OF ART
Children's Games (Pieter Breughel the Elder, 1560, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)
The Chess Players (Paris Bordone, 1550-55, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin)
The House of Cards (Jean-Siméon Chardin, 1736-7, The National Gallery, London)
The Bubble Blower (Jean-Siméon Chardin, 1733-4, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
Boy with a Top (Jean-Siméon Chardin, 1735, the Louvre, Paris)
The Chess Players (Thomas Eakins, 1876, The Metropolitan Musem of Art, New York)
The Card Players (Paul Cézanne, 1890s, various locations)
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