In Play: An Interactive Introduction, students think critically about how we conceive of and understand play, including how it can be utilized in a range of contexts, such as facilitating learning, building community, and addressing social injustices. Over the course of the semester, students complete Play Journals, in which they are tasked to play according to specific prompts — such as playing...

The Spring 2023 iteration of Bloom was another insightful celebration of student creativity and public engagement, showcasing projects across PAH classes, internships, and more! The Spring 2023 event was curated by Professors Jacqueline Barrios and Harris Kornstein, and projects took the form of maps, guided meditations, board games, web archives, fotonovelas, and more, covering topics ranging...

There is a small yet not so small population in the United States that must work at least twice as hard as their peers. I'm referring to college students who are also parents. I wanted to make a meaningful project showing the lives of these students but if you're one, you know, they simply don't have the time to spare. So, I pulled out my tripod, set it up as I went, and I filmed a...

The need for sleep is ubiquitous and part of everyday existence. Like many things that are part of our routine, however, we rarely take the time to consider sleep critically: Why do we sleep? Is sleep different from culture to culture? In what ways is sleep made valuable (or not)? And what’s with dreaming? In PAH 160D5 ("Bedtime: Exploring the Cultures and Practices of Sleep"), we...

In PAH 331 (Video Game Studies: Critical/Cultural Approaches), students engage with a broad range of different game studies theorists and methods. For his Honor's project for the course, Jackson Peters draws on computer game industry scholars as he explores how video games have reshaped our media and cultural landscapes in ways that extend beyond just the contents of the games themselves. In...

The idea of the "meme" was coined by Richard Dawkins in the 1970s to describe units of culture that replicated in a similar way to genetic material—things like catch phrases, clothing fashions, or slogans. The term has since come to primarily mean internet memes, the vast world of audiovisual and textual material that is copied and reinterpreted by internet users under the logics of...