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12/17/2024 | News release | Distributed by Public on 12/18/2024 07:07

Hub XCC Course Has Students Getting into Character and Acting Out Historic Events

Hub XCC Course Has Students Getting into Character and Acting Out Historic Events

Evan Denenberg (Wheelock'25) presenting to the class about the 1977 National Women's Conference. Photos by Dan Watkins

Campus Life

This Hub Course Has Students Getting into Character and Acting Out Historic Events

Class uses role-playing games as a gateway to better understanding contentious occurrences

December 17, 2024
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It's the night of December 20, 1926, and the Boston Italian community has packed into Regina's Pizzeria in the North End for a meeting. The topic? What to do about the conviction and sentencing of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian immigrants and outspoken anarchists convicted of a 1920 robbery and double murder in Braintree. The two men are facing the death penalty.

The men's supporters have two options: torch the courthouse where the pair stood trial or take the more peaceful approach of protesting outside in hopes of appealing the case. Everyone in the room seems to agree that the men's convictions are wildly unfair, given the xenophobic attitudes and anti-anarchistic rhetoric used in the case, as well as the belief that the presiding judge was corrupt.

"We have gathered here today because all of us agree that this was an unjust trial, and we should do whatever it takes to save Sacco and Vanzetti from death row," says Mary Chao (CAS'25), who is playing the owner of Regina's.

Chao is one of 15 students portraying real-life people in Back to the Past: Gaming and Design for Immersive Role Play, a class that's part of the BU Hub's signature project-based, one-semester four-credit elective course Cross-College Challenge (XCC), open to juniors and seniors from all undergraduate schools and colleges. Today, the students are reimagining the real-life debate over how to defend Sacco and Vanzetti-who had limited English proficiency-during a period in US history that became known as the First Red Scare.

Each student was assigned the role of an actual person who was alive at the time, a lawyer, a sculptor, a political activist, and a teacher, to name a few. Some printed out an Italian flag to wave, while others carried a mallet (to use as a gavel) or wore an apron. (Students get extra credit for props.)

"We all came to the US for a better life…as immigrants, there is a lot of discrimination," Chao said. "We believe that together we can help Sacco and Vanzetti."

The Back to the Past course encourages students to act out historic events to understand the motivations of complicated people and important social, political, historical, and cultural moments and perhaps develop some empathy in the process.

"It's just one of those really fun things to make the classroom different," says Kathryn Lamontagne (GRS'16,'20), a College of General Studies senior lecturer in social sciences, who coteaches the course alongside Seth Blumenthal (GRS'13), a College of Arts & Sciences master lecturer in the Writing Program. "We're asked all the time to [think about] backwards design, a flipped classroom, and experiential pedagogy, and this class fits the bill."

We're asked all the time to [think about] backwards design, a flipped classroom, and experiential pedagogy, and this class fits the bill.
Kathryn Lamontagne (GRS'16,'20)

Students use a role-playing technique called Reacting to the Past (RTTP), developed at Barnard College in the late 1990s. The curriculum has student teams pitching, researching, writing, and testing their own microgames (ones that can be played in one or two class periods) based on historic events broadly related to region-specific issues or social justice issues. Examples of game events include the Suffrage Movement, the 1970s and '80s Boston busing crisis, and the renaming of Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day. The time period is varied, ranging from the 1600s to 2016.

Lamontagne learned about RTTP when she was an adjunct professor at Roger Williams University, where first-year students are required to participate in an RTTP course, and she taught a few sections. When she came to BU, she pitched the idea of running a section as part of XCC alongside Maria Gapotchenko (CAS'99, GRS'02), a CAS master lecturer in the Writing Program. This is Lamontagne's fourth semester teaching the class.

As opposed to the well-known fantasy role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons, RTTP is about "students using primary sources to build historical empathy for the characters that they're playing, who happen to also be real people," says Lamontagne, a gender and cultural historian. "The students are in charge. They have to engage with the primary sources. They have to practice public speaking. They have to show metacognition of what they're doing, as they're speaking extemporaneously a lot of the time. So they are building up all these skill sets that they need when they graduate."

Students are divided into teams, or factions, and have to try to convince the other side to see their point of view.

Students say the class is more work than most classes-the research that goes into their games is substantial and often requires trips to Mugar Memorial Library or the Massachusetts State Archives. Those students who aren't attuned to writing long-form academic research papers have their work cut out for them writing the game book.

"You are the expert on this," Lamontagne says. "The teams have to find the primary sources, gloss the primary sources, write the role sheets, and find the historical characters you want to include in the game." The semester culminated in students making final presentations about their games at the University's biannual Experiential Learning Expo last week.

When a class plays the game, everyone is assigned a character, and one student leads the game, reading an introduction and explaining the game's point. Students are divided into factions, or teams, to argue their case. Some people give organized speeches, dress up, or hang up signs. Some students hold secret meetings outside the classroom. "I've had students bring in a band and instruments and parade through the hallways singing labor songs from 1913," Lamontagne says. "It is really cool, and for students who are creative, it lets them be creative. There are roles for shy students, where they don't have to engage so much. But you obviously have to pay attention. Students respond back to one another. When a student makes a point, others clap in class or cheer. It's totally interactive."

The role of Blumenthal and Lamontagne is to sit in the back of the class and observe, though they'll gently nudge a student if they're missing a point they should be making or slipping out of character. "At the end of the day, you have to do what your character would do at that historical moment," Lamontagne says. "Oftentimes students are playing characters of a different gender, or characters that they might not agree with."

Unlike other courses, where students write a paper and then move on to the next assignment, this one has students sticking with their writing longer. "The teams write the game, then are continually editing it week after week, and then a play-test [a dry run]," Lamontagne says. "The teams get the feedback from other students who just played the game, and you have to integrate the feedback thoughtfully. So I think it mirrors more real-world work experience, with big-picture edits. This course forces you to slow down in many ways and listen."

One game the students developed dealt with the vote of whether or not to legalize recreational marijuana, which Massachusetts voted on in 2016 (it passed). Blumenthal teaches another XCC course, Marketing and Social Equity in the Cannabis Industry, so he's the subject matter expert.

"The great part about having teaching partners is accessing somebody else's expertise," Lamontagne says. Blumenthal is the author of Children of the Silent Majority: Youth Politics and the Rise of the Republican Party, 1968-1980 (University of Kansas Press, 2019)-which explores the outreach by Republicans and conservatives to young voters at a seminal time-and that knowledge came in handy when the class was tasked with writing a game on Democrat George McGovern's unsuccessful 1972 presidential campaign against incumbent Republican Richard Nixon.

Successful prototypes may be posted on the RTTP Game Library website for use beyond BU. Blumenthal finds that students are motivated by the fact that XCC courses require a "deliverable" at the end of the semester. For the Back to the Past: Gaming and Design for Immersive Role Play course, students' final games are added to the RTTP library, where students and professors from other schools can download their materials to play the games themselves. Blumenthal says this provides students with "intrinsic motivation" to create a strong game, do a good job, and feel proud of their work. "Our students are doing some pretty spectacular work," Lamontagne adds.

Students work in teams throughout the semester, and Blumenthal says the model is enlightening for everyone involved. "It's interesting to see how students learn different perspectives from their different lived experiences, how they think, and how they engage based on their backgrounds," he says. Both Blumenthal and Lamontagne say students form tight bonds and friendships throughout the semester.

It's interesting to see how students learn different perspectives from their different lived experiences, how they think, and how they engage based on their backgrounds.
Seth Blumenthal (GRS'13)

The games are not a reenactment of past events, but a re-creation and simulation of sorts. In real life, as the class is ticking to a close, students learn that Sacco and Vanzetti were, in fact, executed in 1927 for their crimes. In the Sacco and Vanzetti game, the assimilationists pushing for appealing the case won.

Students say they would recommend the class to others.

Evan Denenberg (Wheelock'25), who played Italian anarchist Mario Buda in the Sacco and Vanzetti game, says Back to the Past had a heavier course load compared to other classes-students researched and wrote a lot, both to run their own game and preparing to play other people's games-but they aren't complaining.

"The competitive nature of these games helped motivate me to learn more," they say. "Because we had to inhabit characters and compete for their goals, the work felt particularly worth it… [The course] gives you a lot of agency to create something for yourself, but also it's just fun to play these games as long as you're willing to buy into them."

"It feels very purposeful that we had this deliverable that we were working towards, knowing that our hard work is going somewhere," Chao says. "It was fun and different, not something that I expected to get in a college class."

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