How Play Shaped the United States from New Media to Politics: Worlding America, 1503-2028

Introduction

WORLDING AMERICA researches how “play” has been a key force in the past and present process of creating America as a coherent and hegemonic “world,” from 1503 to the present. Play is an activity linked to change, serious even when frivolous, potentially transgressive even when rule-bound. Play intersects with the process of worlding (bringing a new world into existence) in liminal moments. In such unstable phases, when new worlds take shape but are not yet consolidated, play comes to the fore as a way to probe possibilities.

Historical Moments of Disruptive Play

I seek out such historical moments of disruptive play when a new visual medium was introduced that contributed directly to tangible political change. I study four pivotal cases:

1. Worlding Colonial America through Engravings, 1590-1776
2. Worlding the Nation through Newspaper Cartoons, 1870-1924
3. Worlding the Body Politic through Television, 1972-2022
4. Worlding Colonial Mars through Twitter/X, 2006-2028

Tracing specific elements of play, in particular imagination, invitation, participation, and improvisation, across cases, I demonstrate how forms of play have been essential to American worlding in ever-evolving mediascapes. I hypothesize that play has intensified through the rise of social media, to such an extent that current forms of worlding driven by play have overridden traditional rules of politics, thus changing the game while playing it.

Methodology

I employ source-based qualitative methods from cultural history, media studies, and American studies to synthesize these cases of hegemonic playful worlding into a comparative transhistorical framework. I move beyond American grand narratives so as to understand the role of play in their construction and implementation, thus contributing an innovative dimension to the composite field of American Studies.

Exploration of Counterhegemonic Play

Additionally, I explore the potential for counterhegemonic play.