We have been collaborating for three years on two NEH-funded projects and we are currently team-teaching a transdisciplinary course focused on gaming in the humanities. The course bridges two Colleges, bringing together undergraduate and graduate students in computer science, undergraduate students in film and media studies, and graduate students in English and creative writing. The course will culminate in five prototypes of “games,” some of which we expect to continue to develop in Fall 2012. Although we feel we are succeeding in our collaboration, we have discovered the need for an adaptive approach in order to get humanists to understand the technical aspects of software design and techies to appreciate the nature of scholarship in the humanities. We suspect others might also have stories of success (and some lessons learned from failure) that would be of value for discussion. Thus, we propose a session on bridging the divide between the humanities and computer science.

Heidi Rae Cooley (Film and Media Studies)
Duncan Buell (computer science)
University of South Carolina