Students will become familiar with a wide range of ludography (a curated list of readings—bibliography) on art and architecture of the medieval world, theory and concepts, and historical game studies during the term:

Some ludography that will be read and discussed:

Atıl, Esin. The Age of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1987), 17–27.

Brower, Benjamin Claude. “The Hajj by Land,” in The Hajj: Pilgrimage in Islam, ed. Eric Tagliacozzo and Shawkat M. Toorawa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 87–112.

Chapman, Adam. “Affording Heritage Experiences, Reenactment and Narrative Historying,” in Digital Games as History: How Videogames Represent the Past and Offer Access to Historical Practice (New York: Routledge, 2016), 173–97.

Chapman, Adam, Anna Foka, and Jonathan Westin. “Introduction: What Is Historical Game Studies?,” Rethinking History 21, no. 3 (2017): 358–71.

Chirilă, Oana-Alexandra. “‘Show This Fool Knight What It Is to Have No Fear’: Freedom and Oppression in Assassin’s Creed (2007),” in Playing the Crusades: Engaging the Crusades, Volume Five, ed. Robert Houghton (London: Routledge, 2021), 53–70.

Cook, Karen M. “Medievalism and Emotions in Video Game Music,” Postmedieval 10, no. 4 (2019): 482–97.

Daniel-Wariya, Joshua. “Rhetorical Strategy and Creative Methodology: Revisiting Homo Ludens,” Games and Culture 14, no. 6 (2019): 622–38.

Decker, Sarah Ifft. “Gender Roles in Medieval Jewish Cultures,” in Jewish Women in the Medieval World: 500–1500 CE (London: Routledge, 2022), 22–35.

Diebold, William J. “Medievalism,” Studies in Iconography 33 (2012): 247–56.

Elliott, Andrew B. R. and Mike Horswell. “Crusading Icons: Medievalism and Authenticity in Historical Digital Games,” in History in Games: Contingencies of an Authentic Past, ed. Martin Lorber and Felix Zimmermann (Bielefeld: Transcipt Verlag, 2020), 137–55.

Everett, Anna. “Race,” in The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies, ed. Mark J.P. Wolf and Bernard Perron, 2nd edition (New York: Routledge, 2023), 509–20.

Hermans, Erik. “Introduction,” in A Companion to the Global Early Middle Ages, ed. Erik Hermans (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2020), 1–12.

Hiriart, Juan “Playing with Taskscapes: Representing Medieval Life through Video Games Technologies,” in The Middle Ages in Modern Culture: History and Authenticity in Contemporary Medievalism, ed. Karl C. Alvestad and Robert Houghton (London: Bloomsbury, 2021), 174–85.

Houghton, Robert. “Crusader Kings Too?: (Mis)Representations of the Crusades in Grand Strategy Games,” in Playing the Crusades: Engaging the Crusades, Volume Five, ed. Robert Houghton (London: Routledge, 2021), 71–92.

Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (London: Routledge & Kegan, 1944),1–27.

Georgopoulou, Maria. “The Artistic World of the Crusaders and Oriental Christians in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” Gesta 43, no. 2 (2004): 115–28.

Georgopoulou, Maria. “The Material Culture of the Crusades,” in Palgrave Advances in the Crusades, ed. Helen J. Nicholson (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2005), 83–108.

Gregory, Rabia. “Citing the Medieval: Using Religion as World-Building Infrastructure in Fantasy MMORPGs,” in Playing with Religion in Digital Games, ed. Heidi Campbell and Gregory P. Grieve (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2014), 134–53.

Kline, Daniel T. “Participatory Medievalism, Role-Playing, and Digital Gaming,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medievalism, ed. Louise D’Arcens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 75–88.

Kuehn, Sara. “The Dragon in Transcultural Skies: Its Celestial Aspect in the Medieval Islamic World,” in Spirits in Transcultural Skies: Auspicious and Protective Spirits in Artefacts and Architecture Between East and West, ed. Niels Gutschow and Katharina Weiler (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2015), 71–97.

Lewis, Katherine J. “‘I’m Not Responsible for the Man You Are!’: Crusading and Masculinities in Dante’s Inferno,” in Playing the Crusades: Engaging the Crusades, Volume Five, ed. Robert Houghton (London: Routledge, 2021), 30–52.

Lynch, Teresa, Jessica E. Tompkins, Irene I. van Driel, and Niki Fritz. “Sexy, Strong, and Secondary: A Content Analysis of Female Characters in Video Games across 31 Years,” Journal of Communication 66, no. 4 (2016): 564–84.

Micheau, Françoise. “Baghdad, an Imperial Foundation (762–836CE),” in The Cambridge World History: Volume 3: Early Cities in Comparative Perspective, 4000 BCE–1200 CE, ed. Norman Yoffee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 397–415.

Micheau, Françoise. “Baghdad in the Abbasid Era: A Cosmopolitan and Multi-Confessional Capital,” in The City in the Islamic World, ed. Salma Khadra Jayyusi et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 219–45.

Mochocki, Michał. “Heritage Sites and Video Games: Questions of Authenticity and Immersion,” Games and Culture 16, no. 8 (2021): 951–77.

Mukherjee, Souvik. “Playing Subaltern: Video Games and Postcolonialism,” Games and Culture 13, no. 5 (2018): 504–20.

Nakamura, Lisa. “Gender and Race in the Gaming World,” in Society and the Internet: How Networks of Information and Communication Are Changing Our Lives, ed. Mark Graham and William H. Dutton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 127–45.

Necipoğlu, Gülru. “From Byzantine Constantinople to Ottoman Konstantiniyye: Creation of a Cosmopolitan Capital and Visual Culture under Sultan Mehmed II,” in From Byzantion to Istanbul: 8000 Years of a Capital, ed. Koray Durak (Istanbul: Sakıp Sabancı Müzesi, 2010), 262–77.

Newhauser, Richard. “Anthologizing the Medieval Senses: A Methodological Overview,” Postmedieval 12, no. 1 (2021): 123–33.

O’Kane, Bernard. “Islamic Art and Architecture in Pre-Mongol Baghdād,” in Baghdād: From Its Beginnings to the 14th Century, ed. Jens Scheiner and Isabel Toral (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 66–97.

Pancaroğlu, Oya. “The Itinerant Dragon-Slayer: Forging Paths of Image and Identity in Medieval Anatolia,” Gesta 43, no. 2 (2004): 151–64.

Pugh, Tison and Angela Jane Weisl. “Medievalisms: The Magic of the Middle Ages,” in Medievalisms: Making the Past in the Present (London: Routledge, 2012), 1–11.

Rees, Ronald. “Historical Links Between Cartography and Art,” Geographical Review 70, no. 1 (1980): 61–78.

Rowland, Thomas. “We Will Travel by Map: Maps as Narrative Spaces in Video Games and Medieval Texts,” in Digital Gaming Re-Imagines the Middle Ages, ed. Daniel T. Kline (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 189–201.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), 1–28.

Sciacca, Christine. Illuminating Women in the Medieval World (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2017), 1–12.

Scott, Joan W. “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” The American Historical Review 91, no. 5 (1986): 1053–75.

Shaheen, Jack G. “Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 588 (2003): 171–93.

Šisler, Vít. “Digital Arabs: Representation in Video Games,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 11, no. 2 (2008): 203–20.

Sweeting, James. “Authenticity: Depicting the Past in Historical Videogames,” Transtechnology Research Reader, 2018, 62–83.

Trépanier, Nicholas. “The Assassin’s Perspective: Teaching History with Video Games,” Perspectives on History, May 1, 2014. https://www.historians.org/research-and-publications/perspectives-on-history/may-2014/the-assassins-perspective.

Trépanier, Nicholas and Giancarlo Casale. “The Ottoman Fleet at the Battle of Mississippi What Videogames Can Teach Us About History,” in Crafting History: Essays on the Ottoman World and Beyond in Honor of Cemal Kafadar, ed. Rachel Goshgarian, Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, and Ali Yaycıoğlu (Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2023), 533–50.

Young, Helen. “Race and Historical Authenticity: Kingdom Come: Deliverance,” in The Middle Ages in Modern Culture: History and Authenticity in Contemporary Medievalism, ed. Karl C. Alvestad and Robert Houghton (London: Bloomsbury, 2021), 28–39.

White, Monica. “The Rise of the Dragon in Middle Byzantine Hagiography,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 32, no. 2 (2008): 149–67.