Bringing History to Life

Julien Bazile (Contributor) Julien Bazile holds a PhD in Information and Communication Sciences from the University of Lorraine within the CREM (Centre de Recherche sur les Médiations). He also holds a PhD in History from the University of Sherbrooke (QC, Canada). His doctoral research project focused on the narration of history in video games, particularly within the action-adventure game Assassin's Creed (Ubisoft, 2007). This research aims to shed light on the logics at work in the creation of historical video games and the issues related to this creative process. A graduate in contemporary history from the University of Lorraine, he seeks to inscribe his work in an interdisciplinary logic, to question the process of creation of these historical games with regard to the duty of rigourous historical research, the limitations due to the game's medium, and the economic, cultural and commercial imperatives linked to the functioning of the video game industry. Finally, it is a question of observing what the historical discourse represents from a historiographical point of view, in order to see how the video game can be considered a writing medium that works on our relationship to history.Etienne Anheim (Contributor) Born in 1973, former student of the ENS Fontenay/St-Cloud (1993-1998), agrégé d'histoire (1996), doctor of history (2004), former member and then CNRS researcher at the École française de Rome (2002-2006), Etienne Anheim's work first focused on the history of scholarly culture in the late Middle Ages, in particular on scholasticism and polyphonic music, and continued with his doctoral dissertation on culture (music, painting, literary and theological production) at the court of Avignon under the reign of Pope Clement VI (1342-1352).

Bringing History to Life explores the school-based uses of history as cultural goods, leisure, and services to train students to better practice some of the thinking that historians must perform when they 'practice their craft.'