What impact do adults—and the stories, movies, television shows, and games they create—have on children’s imaginative play and development? For decades, researchers explored this question and arrived at a variety of conclusions. But few play scholars of late 20th and early 21st centuries proved more influential on this research than psychologists Dorthy G. (1927–2016) and Jerome L. Singer (1924–2019). Having grown up in the years before television when radio captured children’s imaginations, the Singers did not see television and new […]
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Chasing Brian Sutton-Smith and Gregory Bateson: Retracing Metaplay
I had the amazing opportunity through a G. Rollie Adams Research Fellowship to visit The Strong National Museum of Play in order to conduct research for my project on metaplay.
The purpose of this fellowship was to build on my dissertation research, specifically delving further into the theory of metaplay. In my review of the literature, metaplay was poorly defined and inconsistent in its (under)utilization in scholarship since eminent anthropologist Gregory Bateson loosely introduced the idea in a conference paper in […]
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A Research Library atop The Strong Museum—Powered by Donations
The Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play sits quietly on the third floor of The Strong above the excitement and joy of our museum guests. Most guests don’t realize that this library even exists or that it is one of the largest study collections on play in the world. The library collection is one central element to the museum’s mission to share the history and many meanings of play. The library helps the staff as they consider new exhibitions, […]
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Relational Play
Contemporary travel is a special kind of pandemonium, an admixture of excitement, fear, consumerism, and intense security measures. It can be a rather playful experience too, particularly in the U.S. The stops that took me from Pullman, Washington, where currently I live and work, to The Strong National Museum of Play are a case in point. First it was Pullman to Spokane, then it was Spokane to Las Vegas, where I transferred to a flight to Rochester, New York. To […]
Toys and U.S. History in Playthings Magazine
Sometimes, the “a-ha” moment comes from what you don’t find. I came to The Strong Museum to search the earliest (1902–1929) issues of the toy industry journal Playthings for images and stories of the American past. I have spent the past two decades researching the American children’s literature industry, which regularly strived to convey this past to young readers in ways that served its moral and commercial interests. As a scholar new to the toy industry, I was surprised to […]
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Game Instructions: How Do You Learn to Play in an Arcade Room?
In August and September 2024, I had the chance to work in the exhibits and archives of The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. Coming from Switzerland, a country in which the historical study and preservation of video games is still in its early stages, I was impressed by the wealth and the diversity of objects held by this institution.
As part of my doctoral research, I’m working mainly on video games designed for the domestic space, i.e. […]
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Let’s Talk About Something Fun—How About Magic?
From Dungeons & Dragons (1974) to Elden Ring (2023), modern games have asked us time and again to crack our knuckles, dust off our wizard cloaks, and test our magical mettle against fantasy’s most fearsome foes. But for all the magic our in-game spellbooks may contain, it was the pages of video game magazines that had the power to skyrocket an obscure game to national acclaim—or rain financial ruin upon a decorated studio for its latest flop. But how did […]
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Playing with Sex and Gender in Fantasy Tabletop Games
When does play become personal? When does a person’s exploration of a dungeon or fantasy world turn into an exploration of themselves? For some, certainly the answer is “never.” The distance between the game world and the real world is enough to bar any introspection. Or perhaps their playstyle simply does not warrant it. Certainly, one would assume this was true for the fantasy tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs) in the 1970s when the wargame and simulation aspects of the hobby […]
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OMG, Becky: Gossip in the Archives
When new collections are added to an archive, they need to be formally processed. Processing an archival collection consists of performing small preservation tasks, like removing staples and paper clips, going through every box and folder to learn about the contents, and describing the collection. This allows us to create a map of the collection for future researchers. As the archivist in The Strong Museum’s Brian Sutton-Smith Archives of Play, I learn something new every day in a lot of […]