Reacting to the Past ™ Game Books from the Reacting Consortium to be Co-Published by the University of North Carolina Press

UNC Press is proud to announce a new co-publishing partnership with the Reacting Consortium, Inc., based at Barnard College, for its acclaimed pedagogical role-playing game book series, Reacting to the Past ™, effective July 1, 2022.

Reacting to the Past ™ was originally developed under the auspices of Barnard College and is sustained by the members of the Reacting Consortium. The Consortium hosts a regular series of conferences and events to support faculty and administrators in their use of the pedagogy.


“Reacting to the Past ™ is an exceptionally innovative and exciting historical pedagogy, and we have been honored to work with the Reacting Consortium over the last several years to produce game books in a partnership between the UNC Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Services and Reacting Consortium Press. We have been impressed consistently with Reacting Consortium’s rigorous process of game development and evaluation, including peer review standards that mirror many of the best practices for peer review articulated by the Association of University Presses. Given our longstanding commitment to publishing in the field of history and to serving the needs of a diverse community of readers, we are thrilled to expand our partnership with Reacting Consortium as the sole publishing partner for Reacting to the Past ™. We believe this partnership will not only benefit the Press and the Reacting Consortium but the historical profession at large, as a growing number of students and faculty will be able to engage with the Reacting to the Past ™ pedagogy and its game-based exploration of primary sources and high-quality secondary scholarship.”—Mark Simpson-Vos, Wyndham Robertson Editorial Director, UNC Press

“This was a marriage made, if not in heaven, at least in the scholarly stratosphere. The Reacting Consortium, Inc., the nation’s foremost pioneer in higher education active-learning pedagogy, is proud to partner with the University of North Carolina Press, a university press that has earned its reputation for joining scholarly rigor with academic innovation.”— Mark Carnes, Executive Director, Reacting Consortium 

UNC Press associate editor Andrew Winters will guide this expanding partnership, including the development and publication of future game books in association with the Reacting Consortium.

Continuing through the course adoption season for winter and spring 2022 courses, current publisher W.W. Norton will continue to support the Reacting to the Past ™ titles currently available through them, as listed here. UNC Press will begin fulfilling orders for courses beginning July 1, 2022. Additional information and updates are available at UNC Press’s Reacting to the Past ™ webpage.