Games and Gods

June 6 + 9, 6-8pm ET

Volkan Eke

What business might gods have with games? While modern video games can offer spiritual experiences to the curious, we have in fact played games with gods and other spiritual entities for the vast majority of human history. In this course we will explore the phenomena of modern gaming along with older and more traditional folk games to ask why and how "playing" is understood to be central to the development of our spiritual capabilities.

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Volkan Eke is a Doctoral Candidate in the Anthropology Department at The New School for Social Research. His work focuses on the ethos of video game development in Japan where there is greater traffic between the world of videogames and more traditional spiritual experiences. Based on his research, he has recently contributed to the Oxford Companion on Religion and Body (forthcoming) to inquire into the anthropological roots of the relation between games and gods.