In recent years, historians have increasingly grappled with helping their students make historical sense of contemporary conflicts such as Black Lives Matter and the ongoing international discussion about race to protests against vaccine mandates and arguments about public health policy to the rise of populisms both left and right. In two linked sessions, we will share how Reacting to the Past (https://reacting.barnard.edu/) – a historically-informed pedagogy involving roleplaying games that explicitly foreground the role(s) of intellectual, political, and social contestation in how historical change occurs – has enriched and enlivened student engagement with historical conflict and change. Our first session will demonstrate RTTP with a brief playthrough of one of our newer and increasingly popular games, “Chicago, 1968.” This game takes place at/in the Democratic National Convention/streets of Chicago during that tumultuous year and explicitly addresses race, gender, war, and political conflict, the themes of our workshop. This session will allow participants to briefly experience what a Reacting game is and highlight how the pedagogy empowers students, through extensive research, speeches, and gameplay, to better understand the role of conflict in the past and present. This demonstration of RTTP will be facilitated by Dr. Joseph Sramek, Dr. Gretchen Galbraith, Dr. Kyle Lincoln, and Mr. Eric Denby.

After the game, a second linked roundtable discussion will consider how RTTP fosters intellectually rich, historically informed experiential learning. Reacting to the Past practitioners have long argued that, once students enter the subversive space of their Reacting game world, they take control of their own learning as they build their skills in writing, public speaking, careful reading of historical sources, research, collaboration, and problem-solving. Reacting can also foster the kind of historical thinking called for in the American Historical Association’s Tuning Project as part of its effort to articulate the value of historical study in a world that is often cut adrift from historical awareness. Our three remaining panelists will each share their classroom experiences. Dr. Lance Ingwersen will relate how teaching the game “Argentina, 1985” prompted significant introspection among his students about our highly politicized, partisan present and the ways the United States has been grappling with its own past. Dr. Pamela Walker will likewise share her direct experiences of historicizing social conflict using RTTP, including race and gender, during the pandemic winter of 2022 in Ottawa, Canada, when her city was besieged by truckers demanding an end to health restrictions and the Canadian Prime Minister’s resignation. She will contend that Reacting to the Past – far from trivializing complex social and historical problems or encouraging students to theatrically perform race or gender so to reproduce racial oppression and gendered violence – requires students to grapple with moments of conflict and change through careful study of primary sources and then to articulate these historical concepts in debate and writing. Finally, Dr. Andrew Goss will discuss the challenges and opportunities Reacting offers teachers who wish to use an anti-oppressive pedagogy in classes which strive to disrupt dominant narratives about religion, empire, and slavery.