This book establishes play as a mode of humanistic inquiry with a profound effect on art, culture and society. Play is treated as a dynamic and relational modality where relationships of all kinds are forged and inquisitive interdisciplinary engagement is embraced. Play cultivates reflection, connection, and creativity, offering new epistemological directions for the humanities. With examples from a range of disciplines including poetry, history, science, religion and media, this book treats play as an object of inquiry, but also as a mode of inquiry. The chapters, each focusing on a specific cultural phenomenon, do not simply put culture on display, they put culture in play, providing a playful lens through which to see the world. The reader is encouraged to read the chapters in this book out of order, allowing constructive collision between ideas, moments in history, and theoretical perspectives. The act of reading this book, like the project of the humanities itself, should be emergent, generative, and playful.
Table of Content
Chapter 1 Introduction.- PART I: PLAYSPACE, ETHICS & ENGAGEMENT.- Chapter 2 Towards an Ethics of Homo Ludens.- Chapter 3 SPORT MATTERS: On Art, Social Artifice and the Rules of the Game, or, the Politics of Sport.- Chapter 4 Pre-Texts: Press Play to Teach Anything.- Chapter 5 Work, Play, and Civic Engagement.- Chapter 6 Technoecologies: The Interplay of Space and its Perception.- Chapter 7 Meaningful Inefficiencies: Caring for Civics in an Age of Smart Cities or Reconsidering Civic Engagement in the 21st Century.- PART II: PLAYTHINGS, COMEDY & LAUGHTER.- Chapter 8 Laughter in Greek Lyric Poetry.- Chapter 9 Ludic Music in Ancient Greek and Roman Theater.- Chapter 10 Did Jesus Christ Laugh?.- Chapter 11 Comedy, Physicality, and Ludic Dance Gestures: The Comic in Ballet and Tai Chi?.- Chapter 12 Toys, Childhood and Material Culture in Byzantium.- PART III: LANGUAGE & POETICS OF PLAY.- Chapter 13 How to Catch a Falling Knife: Poetic Play as the Practice of Negative Capability.- Chapter 14 The Ludic Impulse in Post-Postmodern Fiction.- Chapter 15 Games Translators Play in Bilingual French-Canadian Theater.- Chapter 16 Immigraντ Poetics.- PART IV: PLAY(MODES) & PERFORMANCE AS TRANSGRESSION.- Chapter 17 Ludics as Transgression: From Surrealism to the Absurd to Pataphysics.- Chapter 18 2 Sisters, 2 Stories: Breast Cancer, Femininity, and Body Ownership.- Chapter 19 Don’t Be Mean and Other Lessons from Children’s Plays of the Federal Theatre Project.- Chapter 20 The Republic of Childhood: Friedrich Froebel’s Kindergarten and Naturphilosophie.- Chapter 21 Oscillating Between Tag and Hopscotch: Théo Angelopoulos’ Playful Aesthetics.
About the author
Vassiliki Rapti and Eric Gordon are Co-chairs of the Ludics Seminar, Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard University.
Vassiliki Rapti holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature. She is the author of
Ludics in Surrealist Theatre and Beyond (2013) and of several volumes of translations and poetry collections.
Eric Gordon is professor of civic design and the director of the Engagement Lab at Emerson College in Boston. He is the author of
The Urban Spectator (2010),
Net Locality: Why Location Matters in a Networked World (2011) and
Meaningful Inefficiencies: Civic Design in an Age of Digital Expediency (2020).
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