Activity #2: Halo and Intersectionality

Curatorial note from Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: In her article positioning video games as feminist pedagogy, Samantha Allen describes two class activities that promote critical inquiry of identity in video games. The second activity, “Halo and Intersectionality,” guides students through the experience of playing the mass-market, military-science-fiction, first-person-shooter game Halo. Allen intersperses game play with discussion groups to facilitate critical thinking about the game and to examine both nonintersectional and intersectional dimensions of power inherent in games, such as the increased difficulty of game play for characters whose identities converge around multiple axes of oppression. By first asking students to work in groups focused on one axis of identity, then reconfiguring the groups into “intersectional think tanks,” Allen facilitates students’ understanding of how intersectionality articulates compounded oppression for particular bodies. These assignments take advantage of students’ immersion in technological cultures to introduce theories of intersectionality and challenge them to consider their own experiences in relation to those who may not share them. Instructors interested in using video games in their classrooms can draw on Allen’s model for guiding students through video-game analysis through intersectional lenses, while her model for promoting intersectional thought through “think tanks” has broader resonance for other approaches to digital pedagogy beyond the video-game genre