Narration, expectation, experience of possibilities: interactive communication of the project results with the support of a digital game

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Susanne Hartwig
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies ; Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 429281822

A generally understandable communication of research results is not the norm, neither in Romance Studies nor in the Disability Studies based on Cultural Studies. However, especially in the case of socio-politically significant topics such as the modification of negative images and concepts of disability, the development of communication formats is an urgent desideratum, because it corresponds to the mandate of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities of 2006. In this sense, the present project is intended as a follow-up project to the DFG-funded project "Narrative, Expectation, Experience. Disability in Contemporary European Theatre and Film". The aim is to develop an interactive course that playfully conveys the central results of the research project to a broad audience and make them available free of charge on the project's own blog. Another objective of the project is to document the process of developing the course, to anchor it theoretically and to reflect on it methodically. The present project relates closely to the analytical perspectives of "narration," "expectation," and "experience" gained in the previous project. The corpus consists of theatre performances and films from different European countries with actors with “learning disabilities”. In communicating the results of the project, it is assumed that a targeted steering of the readings of theatre performances and films can produce new conceptions of disability. Accordingly, the course to be designed contains four elements: (1) "working with frames and scripts of perception and understanding (theory mediation)", (2) "working with film stills or short scenes (expectations)", (3) "acting out alternative courses of stories (narrations)", and (4) "reflections on the experiences". The third step of the course includes the development of a prototype for an “serious game/social awareness game”, the full development of which will be applied for after the project. For this purpose, the project will cooperate with the game developer Playing History. The target group of the course are people who play the course as a supplement to seminars at universities and educational institutions, but also other adults who want to learn more about their conceptions of “learning disability” out of their own motivation. All four elements of the course will be accompanied by theoretical discussions about game-based learning and conceptions of "learning disability” in general. In particular, the project will highlight the contribution of film and theatre studies analyses to fundamental questions of Disability Studies. The reflection accompanying the process will accordingly discuss the game-based communication of research results and the role of theatre/film interpretation as a mediator of innovative conceptions of disability.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants