On February 21, 2025, Dr. Mike Piero will lead a humanities workshop for high school students interested in Cuyahoga Community College’s Mandel Youth Humanities Academy summer program. His session is titled “Empathy Machine: VR Immersive Narratives and the Humanities,” and it will feature students experiencing the award-winning VR immersive narrative, Goliath, which tells the story about a man named Goliath who lives with schizophrenia.
About the Mandel Youth Humanities Academy (Cleveland, OH):
Overseen by Dr. David Busch and as described on MYHA’s website, “The Mandel Youth Humanities Academy is a summer program that offers rising high school juniors and seniors in Northeast Ohio an opportunity to broaden their humanities education and get a taste of college coursework. The summer program includes:
- Discussion-based seminars in philosophy, history, art, literature, and religion
- Explorations and interactive documentaries in new media
- Community-based learning across Cleveland through “City as Text” experiences
Accepted students receive a generous stipend equivalent to a full-time summer job, a personal computer and, as needed, transportation to and from campus.” Interested students can apply here.
Workshop description:
Contrary to the moral panic(s) surrounding video games, humanities scholars have found vast potential in thinking about virtual reality and video games as empathy machines: technologies that have the potential to expand our understanding of others’ lived experiences. On Meta Quest headsets, students will each experience the award-winning VR Immersive narrative, Goliath—a stunning gamified narrative about a man’s experience living with schizophrenia. Through this narrative, participants will start thinking about how technologically-mediated narratives have the capacity to enrich our empathy for others and expand our understanding of our own identities. Dr. Mike Piero will lead a discussion about the power of virtual reality narratives, Goliath’s particular themes, and the importance of critical media literacy to 21st century daily life.
