'Red Dead Redemption' Games To Be Used for University Course on American History

A professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville will be utilizing Rockstar Games‘ famed Red Dead Redemption series to teach a class on American history.

Professor Tore Olsson took to Twitter to share his plans for his “HIUS 383: Red Dead America” course, which will explore the historical reality behind Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption 2. He pointed out that although the 2010 game and its 2018 followup are “often historically inaccurate,” the games still touch on several important historical issues between 1899 and 1911 including colonialism, the Jim Crow era, women’s suffrage, wealth inequality and the very real Pinkerton National Detective Agency to name a few.

HIUS 383: Red Dead America will begin in the Fall 2021 semester with a class size capped at 35. The course is, of course, not open to the general public, so fans of the Red Dead series will have to wait and see if Professor Olsson will share his teachings online.

Who says video games don’t belong in the classroom? I’m a history professor at @UTKnoxville. This fall, I’ll be teaching a new course titled “HIUS 383: Red Dead America,” exploring the historical reality behind @RockstarGames’ series. What kinds of topics will we be exploring? /1 pic.twitter.com/wkaHSvz4E4

— Tore Olsson (@ToreCarlOlsson) February 11, 2021

Though often historically inaccurate, the games skillfully broach a number of crucial historical issues in the 1899-1911 period, such as:

-The frontier mythology and its long afterlife
-The expansion of monopoly capitalism and how railroads extended corporate power /2

— Tore Olsson (@ToreCarlOlsson) February 11, 2021

-The astounding inequalities in wealth that became obvious during the Gilded Age
-Settler colonialism and the dispossession of Native peoples
-The making of Jim Crow racial violence in the South
-The Mexican Revolution and its transnational impacts /3

— Tore Olsson (@ToreCarlOlsson) February 11, 2021

-The memory of the Civil War and the making of the Lost Cause myth
-Women’s suffrage and its opponents
-American empire and the expansions of 1898
-The cosmopolitanism of the American population, including Chinese, Mexican, Italian, and German immigrants, among others /4

— Tore Olsson (@ToreCarlOlsson) February 11, 2021

-Stereotypes of Appalachian degeneracy and poverty alongside the reality of corporate extraction and dispossession
-The privatization of law enforcement via the Pinkerton detective agency
-And MANY more – but in a nutshell, some of the biggest historical dilemmas of the era /5

— Tore Olsson (@ToreCarlOlsson) February 11, 2021

Spread the world and tell your @UTKnoxville friends! The course is currently capped at 35, but if a long waitlist develops, I’ll work hard to expand the size. Can’t wait for August! @GameSpot @IGN @PCGamer @Steam @Twitch /6

— Tore Olsson (@ToreCarlOlsson) February 11, 2021

In case you missed it, 2020 was the second-best selling year for Rockstar’s other big title, GTA V.