New project to prepare global and area studies units for emerging technologies

Judith Pintar
Judith Pintar, Teaching Professor

A project led by the Game Studies and Design (GSD) program in Informatics has been selected to receive the Illinois Global Institute New Approaches to International Area and Global Studies grant. The project, "Extending Capacities of Area and Global Studies to Shape the Future of Emerging Technologies," is the inaugural recipient of the two-year, $30,000 award.

Principal investigators on the project include iSchool Teaching Professor Judith Pintar; John Randolph, director of the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center; David Cooper, head of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures; Patrick Hammie, professor and chair of Studio Art in the School of Art and Design; Kathryn Holliday, Randall J. Biallas Professor of Historic Preservation and American Architectural History and professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture; and John Toenjes, professor in the Department of Dance. The grant will be administered for Game Studies and Design by Lisa Bievenue, director of Informatics Programs.

The new project will build the capacity of global and area studies units on campus to engage critically and creatively with interactive, immersive, and AI-generative technologies. Participants will contribute their interdisciplinary approaches and develop new skills as they collaborate with scholars, translators, writers, artists, and designers to study and create works of global concern, such as documentary films, interactive performances, and digital applications. At the conclusion of the grant, the team will have established a coalition of campus units at the intersection of Humanities, Entertainment, Art, and Technology (HEAT) that could evolve into a future center, program, or institute. The project will launch new interdisciplinary certificate programs across campus, including a suite of collaborative X+GSD undergraduate degree programs to integrate coursework related to emerging technologies with domain knowledge in the humanities and social sciences.

"A significant value added for students enrolled in X+GSD programs (including a proposed IS+GSD major) will be studio-based pedagogy emphasizing team-based work on 'real' projects within a collaborative arts studio course. The projects that students would have the capacity to create after four years of working on cross X+GSD teams is exciting to contemplate," said Pintar.

At the iSchool, Pintar directs the Game Studies and Design Program. Her research and teaching interests include narrative design, game studies, and gameful pedagogies, which she pursues through the E-Literatures & Literacies Lab (EL3). She holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Illinois.

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