What is dead may never die, but will be expected to participate in class discussions. At least that’s the case at UC Berkeley with their newest class based on HBO’s hugely popular Game of Thrones.

The universities listing of the class—taught by Justin Vaccaro—says, “This course will examine how and why Game of Thrones achieved such notoriety and popularity. Its success was not so much a fluke but a perfect storm of influences and circumstances on the one hand and a fully realized aesthetic and thematic vision on the other.”

Yeah, plus it has dragons and magic.

While spending three nights a week discussing Game of Thrones sounds pretty typical for me, the course will go well beyond—uh, spoiler alert?—trying to figure out if Jon Snow is really dead. The course’s required readings includes dense philosophers like Rousseau and Foucault, and covers a myriad of topics such as power, morality, politics, and personal status to name just a few.

Vaccaro says the summer course has produced the highest turnout he has ever had for a non-required class. “Its whole attitude about a world that is morally complicated, and where answers don’t come easily or at all, is strangely very compelling and strangely reassuring,” he said.

Considering George RR Martin‘s A Song of Ice and Fire novels draw heavily from history (like The Wall being based on the Roman Empire’s Hadrian’s Wall and the Red Wedding being based on a Scottish slaughter), it wouldn’t be surprising to see other such Game of Thrones classes pop-up in the future across many departments.

So what would kind of Game of Thrones-inspired course would you like to take? Lannister Economics? Tyrell Agriculture? A course on how to convince an author to sit down and finish a book? Tell us in the comments section below.

HT: Tech Times
Image Credit: HBO