Avant-garde Curriculum Meets Avant-garde Art: Students Roleplay 19th-century French Artists

What’s a better way to learn history than by reliving the past? While it isn’t possible to time-travel, FREN 1501/1502 - Gateways to French and Francophone Studies offers the next best thing with an immersive role-playing game, using pedagogical material from Reacting to the Past Consortium. Spring 2025’s theme was Modernism vs. Traditionalism: Art in 19th-century Paris, with students taking on roles of famous artists, art critics, art dealers, and museum representatives. The game lasted several weeks, with students vying for a place in the Salon, a prestigious traditional art gallery run by the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Those who did not make it into the Salon had to find other ways to showcase and sell their paintings in rival art galleries, or risked ending up on the streets.

“What I love about this particular game is that it takes something students think they’re familiar with, like Impressionism, and it contextualizes and complicates their understanding in a profound way,” says assistant professor and course instructor Ioana Pribiag.

“Suddenly, a painting is not just art, but also makes a statement about who counts as an artist, what counts as a subject worthy of representing, and how that representation is enmeshed in relations of power, commodification, and cultural authority.”

A Valuable Expansion

With a bigger class size and limited number of roles in the original game—a majority of them men—Pribiag and teaching assistant Kirsten Smith researched lesser known but talented 19th-century women artists to add to the game such as Rosa Bonheur, Julie Delance-Feurgard, Virginie Demont-Breton, Marie Petiet, and Louise Breslau, and Anne de Rochechouart. These new roles added a feminist dimension to the debates and introduced more art galleries such as the course’s first Women’s Salon.

For the final step of the game, students presented their work in the Exposition Universelle of 1889, which took place on April 29. They discussed their paintings in character with prospective buyers, played by faculty, students, and guests across the French and Italian department. Artists such as Paul Cézanne or Camille Pissarro who were not accepted into the Salon needed to work extra hard to persuade passers-by of their paintings’ value in hopes of catching the interest of secret buyers, art collectors, museum representatives, and philanthropists. This live event prompted students to use their creativity and persuasive skills with respect to the viewpoints of their characters to successfully sell their art.

"Despite having years of teaching experience, I had never seen a roleplaying game used in a classroom as a form of instruction,” says Smith. “I found the students to be incredibly engaged in the class during the game and invested in strategizing with other players as well as meeting their own characters' objectives. However, what I think was most inspiring was watching students develop analytical skills and learn about this time in France's history through the lens of a game. The format really lets students learn at their own pace since they are both interacting with others and learning about their own character's goals, aspirations, and viewpoints, while developing an understanding for where their character fits in this historical context. I'm really looking forward to implementing this type of learning experience in the future."

Student Perspectives

Career Ready

Liberal arts coursework helps you develop ten core competencies to prepare you for your future career, including: