Composition Won!: Roleplaying Your Way to Success is Writing, Rhetoric, and Beyond is designed to help an instructor use roleplaying games to teach writing. It argues that college itself is a kind of roleplaying game where students are rarely given explicit rules about how to succeed, and it focuses on shedding light on the unwritten expectations that students are likely to face in their college courses. It embraces the idea that learning to write can and should be fun. Unlike traditional textbooks, it seeks to entertain while instructing with a comedic approach to writing, rhetoric, research, and college life. This textbook works like a website with links to videos and other useful resources.
Paul Dahlgren is Professor and Chair of English and Modern Languages at Georgia Southwestern State University. He was a Governor’s Teaching Fellow in 2017 and directed the Center for Teaching and Learning at Georgia Southwestern State University for several years. He is active in the Reacting to the Past community and is currently working on a game designed to teach literary theory and has playtested and evaluated several Reacting games. His academic research focuses on the history of rhetoric from the Enlightenment to the present with special attention to rhetoric and poetics.
Jennifer Ryer is a Lecturer of English at Georgia Southwestern State University, where she has used Reacting to the Past in her literature and composition courses for several years. Her academic research centers on early British literature with a focus on eighteenth-century theater and imperialism.
Genie Bryan is a professor of English at Georgia Southwestern State University. She has used Reacting to the Past for several years and has participated in several Reacting workshops to better prepare her to more successfully use this pedagogical approach in her classroom. Her recent academic research is focused on the Gothic and popular culture.