Only the English department could possibly ever get away with this.
Rice University will be offering a course that has students play the game Skyrim while reading Norse mythology. Most students skip class to play games anyway, so I suppose this keeps them in the classroom.
“Scandinavian Fantasy Worlds: Old Norse Sagas and Skyrim” is the course in question at Rice University in Houston, TX, where students will be reading translations of Old Norse and Old Icelandic passages while playing different quests within Skyrim.
Apparently the psychology behind “fantasy” in gamer culture will also be addressed in the course.
Listen, it took a long time for me to read any book that was dissected in class. Hell, I didn’t voluntarily read nonfiction until I was out of college, so incensed by school’s incessant desire to look too deeply into things that it made me automatically hate it.
There’s no word on what sort of freedom students will have in-the-game.
We here at SourceFed came up with some future classes for your reading pleasure:
- “A Slave Obeys: Objectivism Gone Bioshock“
- “Virtual Auto Maintenance And Gran Turismo“
- “Interglobal Politics: Civilization V And The Death Of Negotiation”
- “Corporate Finances In The NFL: The Cost Of The Madden Curse”
- “Lessons In Metal: Brutal Legend“
- “Aim For The Head: Call of Duty And Casual Violence“
