Offered July 9, 2020

This game follows the story of Japanese exclusion in California from 1906, when the San Francisco School Board voted to segregate Japanese immigrant children from white children, to 1920, when California voters passed the second of two laws aimed at limiting Japanese land ownership. Throughout the series of events covered in the game, local, state and federal officials will clash on the appropriate response to Japanese immigration, while officials from Tokyo will aggressively challenge any poor treatment of their citizens in the United States, threatening both military and financial consequences. Throughout the game, the debate raging over Japanese immigration will overlap with other contemporaneous issues, including urban-rural divides, the labor movement, state and city corruption, the rise of California progressivism, women's suffrage, and San Francisco's attempt to win and plan a successful World's Fair.

Game authors: Abigail Markwyn, Allison O’Mahen Malcom

Offered July 16, 2020

There is no more truly global event in the history of the pre-modern world than the great Mongol Qurultai of 1246. Coming from as far afield as France, Russia, Armenia, Baghdad, Tibet and Korea – dignitaries and diplomats came to observe and react to the most consequential election in Eurasian history to that point. Genghis Khan and his four sons had assembled the largest empire in the world – now it would be the grandsons of Genghis who would fight among themselves to take the reigns and set the course of world history. This game takes students to the Golden Ordo – the gigantic tent of the Mongol Khans – where a remarkable woman, the empress dowager Torregene, presides over a series of debates which will reshape not only the Mongol Empire but the entire world.

This game is divided into three debates. The first discusses who should be the next Great Khan and on what basis they should rule. The second is a theological debate between visiting Christian, Muslim and Buddhist dignitaries judged by the Mongol characters. The third has these characters debate where the Mongol army should invade next.

Game author: John Giebfried

Offered July 23, 2020

This game explores how Egypt sought to develop as a modern nation state while honoring cultural and religious traditions, and how British imperialism distorted its efforts. The existential questions animate three inter-related crises: the 1925 publication of a book claiming religion and politics are separate spheres in Islam; proposed legislation in 1926 that would limit a man’s right to have multiple wives and divorce a wife easily and unilaterally; whether to accept in 1927 a proposed treaty with Great Britain and focus on reform or reject the treaty and focus on achieving full independence. Debates take place in salons and cabinet meetings between royalists, liberals, populists, feminists, modernists, and traditionalists. Strong personal rivalries, a flawed constitution, fledgling democratic institutions, and British interference mean that parliament is frequently suspended and election results ignored, further adding to the confusion over who speaks for the nation and who speaks for Islam and what should be the relationship between the two.

Game author: Heather Keaney