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This article offers a typological framework for analyzing how video games make use of historical elements, shaping the ways players engage with and think about the past. Phenomenologically induced labels are posited for identifying different deployments of and experiences with historical elements in video games, illustrated by examples drawn from analysis of selected historically oriented, situated, or themed commercial video games. Building on the literature of gaming, popular media, and history education, the authors theorize specifically about the interactions between game design, player response, historical thinking, and historical representations encountered in video games. The goal is to develop vocabulary useful to researchers and educators that attends to the interface between school-based history learning and the extra-curricular influence of video games.

This case study explores potential educational tensions in historical empathy for learning about emotionally difficult topics through lessons that use dramatic feature films (movies). It investigates one case of historical empathy in the classroom by analyzing what a high-school teacher and her students do and talk about in class. The observed lesson was part of the teacher's unit on World War II and the Holocaust in a World History course using the 2002 Academy Award-winning film "The Pianist". The conclusion interprets this case as an example of how the visual and emotional power of movies may lead some students to "over-empathize" and feel that they can "really" know what a historical perspective must have been like. The "caring" aspect of historical empathy has the potential to overrun historical context and override other educational goals like learning and applying content knowledge. (Contains 2 figures.)

The popularity of VHS and DVD over the past two decades has greatly expanded the influence of history movies, watched by millions of adolescents in homes and classrooms. This paper examines two secondary U.S. history teachers' instructional uses of history motion pictures in their classrooms. Ray used The Patriot (2000) to teach history as stories about the past created by people using imagination and evidence. Marie used Roots (1977) to interweave African American history as a thematic thread throughout her curriculum for her almost entirely White student population. By analyzing the cases of these two teachers, we investigate how history feature films function as instructional tools and illustrate the ways in which movies are both powerful and dangerous in the classroom.

The attacks of September 11th, followed by U.S. military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, have brought greater attention to the simmering conflict between Islam and the West--a conflict most brutally played out historically during the Crusades. The series of holy wars for control of Jerusalem and the Holy Land stretched over centuries--from 1096 to 1291 (with subsequent efforts as late as the mid-1400s). Recent statements from Islamic militants denouncing U.S.-led forces in Iraq as "crusaders" show that passions still are fired in the Muslim world by the memory of the Crusades. Into this political environment, film studio Twentieth Century Fox recently released The Kingdom of Heaven, the first Hollywood movie to seriously address the Crusades and their present-day implications. The film is a timely commentary--that nearly a thousand years after the Crusades began, peace in the Holy Land remains elusive. This present-day outlook makes The Kingdom of Heaven a useful educational tool to get students to talk about the ways in which people today make use of the past to explain or critique contemporary events. This article aims to provide educators with supplementary background on the time period and to suggest ideas for using the film in the classroom. (Contains 3 notes.)