Welcome to the Regional RTTP Workshop
at Eastern Michigan University
We will convene on March 12th-13th in Ypsilanti, Michigan on the campus of Eastern Michigan University.
We are pleased to invite college faculty and students to the regional “Reacting to the Past” Conference. At this conference faculty, full time lecturers, adjuncts, administrators and students will learn about "Reacting to the Past" by participating in an intensive two-day game (see “featured game” below). The game is set in the past, and thus might be regarded as history, but also explores multiple additional disciplines.
Faculty role-playing at the Greenwich Village game.
Featured Game
The Threshold of
Democracy: Athens
at 403 B.C.
The game recreates the intellectual dynamics of one of the most formative periods in the human experience. After nearly three decades of war, Sparta crushed democratic Athens, destroyed its great walls and warships, occupied the city, and installed a brutal regime, "the Thirty Tyrants." The excess of the tyrants resulted in civil war and, as the game begins, they have been expelled most ingeniously by Socrates and his young supporters. Will Athens retain a political system where all decisions are made by an Assembly of 6,000 or so citizens? Will leaders continue to be chosen by random lottery? Will citizenship be broadened to include slaves who fought for the democracy and foriegn-born metics who paid taxes in its support? Will Athens rebuild its long walls and warships and again extract tribute from the city-states throughout the eastern Mediterranean? These and other issues are sorted out by a polity fractured into radical and moderate democrats, oligarchs, and Socratics, among others. The debates are informed by Plato's Republic, as well as excerpts from the Thucydides, Xenophon, and other contemporary sources. By examining democracy at its threshold, the game provides the perspective to consider its subsequent evolution.
This conference is open to all EMU faculty, full time lecturers, adjuncts, administrators and students, with tuition waived. However registration is limited, so please register soon. The conference is also open to anyone from any other university who would like to attend for a minimal fee.
Click here for more information about registration.
