E. James Holland Symposium on American Values
The symposium is named in honor of its creator, E. James Holland, retired dean of the ASU College of Liberal and Fine Arts, and is designed to bring the ASU community and the public together to reflect on issues related to the country’s values.
The ASU Symposium on American Values has brought more than 50 knowledgeable and sometimes provocative figures from the front lines of American culture and society to the ASU campus to spark discussion on a wide range of topics. Pop culture, politics, entertainment, immigration, foreign policy, and violence provide a sampling of the subjects covered in the annual lecture.
The Holland Symposium has brought to campus noted scholars from a variety of fields, including ecology, sociology, psychology, political science, education, and business.
2023 Symposium
Games and American Values
Our speakers, Patrick Jagoda and Ashlyn Sparrow, will discuss the innovative approaches to transmedia games that they have developed through research, teaching, and outreach at the Weston Game Lab at the University of Chicago. Their presentation, titled “The Values of Games: Economics, Art and Culture,” will explore how digital, analog, and alternate reality games can create meaningful encounters with questions that can help us understand the human condition.
Schedule of Events
About the Speakers
Patrick Jagoda, William Rainey Harper Professor of English and Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago, specializes in media theory, game studies and design, science studies, and twentieth and twenty-first century American Literature and Culture. He has published over fifty articles in humanistic and scientific journals and is author of several books including Network Aesthetics (U of Chicago P 2016) and Experimental Games: Critique, Play and Design in the Age of Gamification (U of Chicago P 2020).
Ashlyn Sparrow, Assistant Director of the Weston Game Lab at the University of Chicago, is a game designer with a passion for creating play-centric experiences while telling deep and meaningful stories about the human condition. Her career path has included multiple roles in the fields of game design and the technology of teaching and learning.
Together, they are co-authors, with Ireashia Bennet, of the multimedia book Transmedia Studies: Narrative Methods for Public Health and Social Justice (Stanford UP 2022). They have created multiple interactive and game-based projects, including:
- ECHO (transmedia game about COVID-19), 2020
- A Labyrinth (transmedia game in response to COVID-19), 2020
- Terrarium (transmedia game about climate change), 2018-2019
- Bystander (video game about sexual harassment and sexual violence), 2016-2018
For more information about the symposium, contact: