Your work is not going to matter if you do not know how to present it. We will work toward understanding why the behavioral elements of presence (voice, body language, and breathing) are crucial for communicating to an audience. We will study what a story is, how it works, and how to use it to create an impactful presentation.

This course examines both historical and contemporary witchcraft. It looks at various beliefs and accusations and the contested terms of “magic” and “religion” in a variety of social and cultural settings.

Photo credit: The Magic Circle (1886) by John William Waterhouse

In the twenty-first century, video games have exploded in popularity, eclipsing older pop culture formats like film and television. But if the medium is new, many of the most popular games today look backward to the past, such as history-intensive franchises like Red Dead Redemption, Assassin’s Creed, Ghost of Tsushima, or Civilization. This course uses the fictional content of select video games to explore major social, cultural, economic, and political dilemmas in the human past, while pondering how games can both reveal and conceal historical truths.