| A Digital Role-Playing Game for the History of Medicine
The development of a game-based simulation for exploring the early history of the development and history of the smallpox vaccination.
Edward Jenner's 1798 smallpox vaccine was a breakthrough against an epidemic disease, and its subsequent role as a public health measure demonstrates the interplay of disease, patient, healers, and social institutions in medical history. Our project, Pox and the City: A Digital Role-Playing Game for the History of Medicine, explores these complex interrelationships in a format that will enhance existing humanities teaching and enable historians of medicine to reach new audiences. The game, a collaboration between historians of medicine and Serious Games specialists, can be played as a smallpox doctor, a virus, or a patient. The grant will be used to create and test the first level of the game for each of these characters. Pox and the City makes use of the world-renowned historical collection of books, ephemera, images, and artifacts held by the College of Physicians in Philadelphia. The outcome will be an open-source, Flash-based RPG for use in web-based and GeoDome applications.
[White paper][Grant products][Media coverage]
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Project fields:
History and Philosophy of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Program:
Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants
Division:
Digital Humanities
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Totals:
$48,989 (approved)
$48,989 (awarded)
Grant period:
7/1/2011 – 6/30/2013
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