War (and) Games (Discussion)

A conversation about the long history and seemingly unlikely combination of warfare and gaming, and the representation of war and militarism in computer and board games (for example, the official Pentagon recruiting game America's Army). Questions to consider might include: how can the procedural mechanisms of a game capture the chaos of lived experience that is a battle? What are the ethics of "playing" with war? How do we evaluate the professionalization of gaming and simulation in relation to modernity? How do games function as sites of resistance or mobilization among "Generation Kill" (the title of the recent book and miniseries by Evan Wright and David Simon)? This will be an exploratory roundtable discussion for those interested in the topic, not a lecture. Professor Kirschenbaum will have examples on display from his personal collection of several hundred boardgames; attendees are likewise encouraged to bring copies of games they would like to discuss. Part of the ARHU semester on War and Representations of War.