Keynote: E. James Holland University Symposium on American Values
The featured speakers for ASU’s 2023 E. James Holland University Symposium on American Values will be Patrick Jagoda, William Rainey Harper Professor of English and Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago and Ashlyn Sparrow, Assistant Director of the Weston Game Lab at the University of Chicago.
The Values of Games: Economics, Art, and Culture
How can games be used to create interdisciplinary learning opportunities and inspire social change? Jagoda and 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.
Informal reception to follow in the Mayer Museum.
Livestream Information
Can’t make it to the presentation? Tune in online!
About the Speakers
Ashlyn Sparrow 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 Director and Assistant Director of the Weston Game Lab at the University of Chicago and 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