Seeking a splash of Game of Thrones in your academia, but don’t want to have to enrol at Lannisport A&M? Harvard’s got your back. Please be sure to keep this in mind the next time someone hassles you during your underpants only HBO Go binge sessions.
Professors of the Ivy League university/Simpsons writer factory will be offering a course dubbed “The Real Game of Thrones: From Modern Myths to Medieval Models.” The “real” portion of the title should clue you in that this won’t be a study of Peter Dinklage’s wax statue or anything like that. The course will merge the pay cable fantasy series with an exploration of medieval Eurasia.
“Game of Thrones does dramatize nicely some fundamental things going on in medieval courts,” said professor Sean Gilsdorf when speaking with Time. “Tensions between a queen and the younger women who marry their sons are some ‘Real Housewives of 10th-century Germany’ kind of stuff, where you see these women going after each other.”
The use of an accessible pop culture phenomenon is definitely a sensible way to bridge concepts, explore subjects and contrast fantasy from fact all in one tidy college setting.
“When I read medieval verse epics with my students, they’d say, ‘Oh, that’s like in Game of Thrones,'” recalls co-professor Racha Kirakosian on her experiences at Oxford while teaching. “No, if anything at all, it’s the other way around. Isn’t it partly our job [as professors] to use that interest and go deeper?”
We imagine a similar course melding Arli$$ and sports management isn’t in the on-deck circle, but we’ll leave that to Harvard and Robert Wuhl.
(Via Time)
