Students react to the past – and sometimes rewrite history.

It’s 1889 at the World Exposition in Paris, where the Modernist painters are clashing with the Traditionalists. Tempers flare as artists, dealers and critics alike defend their artistic preferences while making passionate sales pitches to patrons milling about the room.

There’s no shortage of drama, of course. And you’ll have to ignore the jeans and T-shirts. But the 21st-century students playing this Reacting to the Past game have studied not only their own character but others as well. They have embraced their roles – Van Gogh even showed up sporting a bandaged ear.

They need to know everything possible about the art and artists – and contemporary opinions of both. That’s the only way they can convincingly debate and verbally out maneuver the opposition or even make an impassioned plea.

Reacting to the Past, a new learning program in use at McDaniel and many other colleges, immerses students in historical events through role-playing. “Modernism vs. Traditionalism: Art in Paris, 1888-89” is the first written by a McDaniel professor – the brainstorm of Gretchen McKay, associate professor of Art History, with help from collaborators at Simpson and Colby colleges.

Sometimes the students change history as they re-play Galileo’s trial or events in Athens in 403 B.C. or the collapse of apartheid in South Africa. But regardless of era or event, the students can’t play effectively without knowing the people, place and times almost as well as they know their own.