Lecture with Sarah Slingluff, "A Whole New World? Orientalism in Video Games"

About

In this talk, Dr. Slingluff will review lessons she has learned through her consulting work on video games, most notably Assassin's Creed, Mirage, done through the Digital Lab for Islamic Culture and Collections (DLIVCC) and in the classroom. She will discuss common pitfalls that designers of all cultures often fall into when making video games set in or inspired by historic Islamicate societies, how to avoid them, and more broadly reflect upon the place that art history and history have in games of all natures.

Sarah Slingluff, PhD is a specialist in the material culture of medieval al-Andalus (Spain and Portugal). Her research examines fortifications in the center of the Iberian Peninsula (Castilla-La Mancha) in the eighth through twelfth centuries. Her approaches are situated at the intersections of art history, archaeology, history, media studies, and cultural representation. She concurrently holds the position of Postdoctoral Associate, Medieval Islamic Art, Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland, and Lead Educator for the Digital Lab for Islamic Visual Culture and Collections. In this role she works with game industry professionals to decolonize video games and has worked on several games , most notably Assassin's Creed, Mirage. These experiences have led her to explore how visual culture—particularly in contemporary digital media and gaming—engages with and reimagines historical traditions, with a special focus on medieval Islamicate societies and transregional artistic exchange. In this research, she brings together methods from art history, game studies, and cultural theory to analyze how digital platforms construct and circulate narratives of the past.

Image: Samarra, Assassin's Creed Mirage, Credit: Ubisoft Entertainment

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