Graduate Seminar – The Curse of Strahd

Semester(s) Offered: Spring

Credits: 4

Course Call Number: GAMES-GT 910

Prerequisite(s): NONE

This seminar will focus on tabletop RPGs, the affordances of the form, and the themes that emerge during play.

Throughout the course of the semester, the class will, in groups, critically play through a campaign of The Curse of Strahd in D&D 5e. Each week, class discussions & readings will supplement this play. Topics might include: gothic horror in cinema and literature, depictions of trauma in embodied games, the vampire as a symbolically queer figure. Guest speakers will include literature scholars, horror authors, and designers of some of the official D&D books.

By the end of the semester each student will have produced 1-2 articles about a chosen subtopic related to the campaign. These articles will be collected into an online blog or zine.