Global Experience Inspired Final Project

Christine McCullough, a student in Digital Humanities and Social Sciences, traveled abroad to Greece this past spring semester to complete her minor in English Literature. She says she spent most of her time abroad in Greece, unlike other students who traveled around during their stay.

For a final project in Themes in Comparative Literature, she created an interactive fiction project which takes the user through Athens using compass directions to navigate and commands such as “take, drop, give, ask, and tell” to take part in the journey.

Her project included two maps as featured below. The user starts in Modern times, where they must complete a quest for Athena. After competition they move onto a quest in ancient times.

The user is able to interact with characters including Athena, Poseidon, Zeus, Aristotle, and Hadrian. She explains that “the quest involves getting favors from the three gods, which unlock the section where you can talk to Aristotle and Hadrian.”

Christine will be one of the first students to graduate from RIT with a degree in Digital Humanities and Social Sciences. When asked to describe what she does, she explained that it is a combination of graphic design, coding and the humanities. This major was a good fit because she likes art, design, critical thinking and coding.

She has spent her time at RIT gaining experience by working on projects with professors as cooperative education, contributing to projects for the Amazon Echo, design for a novel and a NEH grant working to make Marketview Heights archive presentable and functional.