Play Like a Champion

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

It has long-been a part of Notre Dame's Saturday football tradition. As uniformed players leave the locker room and descend a tight stairwell to the field below, they reach up and touch the iconic "Play Like a Champion Today" sign. Countless players, students, and fans have touched the sign over the years, hoping to imbibe some illusive and ineffable Fighting Irish magic. But what does it mean to "play like a champion today" ... or any day, really? More simply, what does it mean to play? Play is an inescapable and essential part of the human condition. And, yet, the experience's core liminality defies easy definition and explanation. This course provides an introduction to the study of human play primarily through the lens of analog and digital games. It is designed for first- and second-year students from a range of backgrounds and disciplines. Given the variety of play practices across human history and cultures, this class strives to equip students with a critical vocabulary and interpretive framework to help them make sense of play in its many forms. This class will pay particular attention to how rules, goals, game mechanics, and narratives offer reliable and compelling structures for gameplay, and what ludic activities reveal about social power.