Tabletop Board Games to Teach the Literature of Climate Change

Millions of dollars change hands around our classroom tables as representatives of six nations negotiate climate emissions targets and sustainability goals. Russia and Canada try to build a coalition against China, while the US delegation secretly tries to ramp up its investment in more coal plants. World leaders have not gathered at my university; rather, students in my undergraduate American literature course on climate change are immersed in a tabletop board game. This article argues that teaching climate change literature with the frameworks of game-based learning (GBL) and game design for learning (GDL) creates an especially powerful pedagogical strategy for addressing the planetary crisis. This approach cultivates systems thinking, builds community, and opens a “third space” for engagement that moves beyond traditional modes of instruction. Established climate pedagogy rightly emphasizes fact-based knowledge and solution-driven thinking; a gameful approach supplements such work by drawing on Nicole Seymour’s concept of “bad environmentalism” (114), which foregrounds irony, ambiguity, and subversion to create space for students to wrestle with ethical complexity and systemic friction.