Starting January 2026, Tennessee students can study the LA Riots through San Andreas and Reagan-era politics through Vice City in a legitimate history class that turns gaming into academic analysis.

One university is completely flipping the script on traditional education, using Grand Theft Auto to disrupt the usual MO regarding college history classes: wordy textbooks, lengthy lectures about dates and battles, and maybe the occassional documentary if you're lucky.

As per IGN, students in the University of Tennessee can enroll in "Grand Theft America: U.S. History Since 1980 through the GTA Video Games" starting January 20, 2026. Yes, you read that correctly. The same game series that had parents clutching their pearls for decades is now becoming legitimate academic material.

Before you dismiss this as some kind of easy-A fluff course, you might want to hear what it's actually about - the mastermind behind this educational experiment is Professor Tore Olsson. He previously created a course using Red Dead Redemption to teach about the American Wild West, complete with a companion book that attracted attention from gaming fans worldwide.

The course isn't just about playing games and calling it homework - though that would certainly make for an interesting syllabus. Instead, Professor Olsson is using GTA as a lens to examine real American history from 1980 to the present day. The GTA series has always been a funhouse mirror reflection of American culture, society and history.

The games lampoon everything from consumerism and celebrity worship to political corruption and urban decay. While the characters are stealing cars and causing mayhem, they're doing it in a world that's essentially a caricature of real American cities and time periods, with real-world names, locations, brands and more abstracted to varying degrees.

Take Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, for example. Set in a fictional version of 1990s Los Angeles, the game's storyline involves corruption, drug dealing, and ultimately culminates in a massive urban uprising when crooked cops are acquitted of their crimes. Sound familiar? It's a direct parallel to the 1992 LA Riots, one of the most significant events in modern American history.

The genius of using this game to teach about the riots is that students are already emotionally invested in the story. They've experienced the frustration and injustice through the eyes of the main character. When the professor then pivots to discussing the real historical events, students have an intimate understanding of why people took to the streets.

Professor Olsson plans to showcase gameplay during class time, making this accessible to everyone regardless of their gaming experience or financial situation. It's more like a film studies class where you watch clips together, except the "film" happens to be an interactive crime saga. There was one hiccup in the professor's plans, though. He had originally hoped to include Grand Theft Auto 6 in the curriculum, but Rockstar Games threw a wrench in that by delaying the game's release.

" Rockstar delayed my homework" - some student in the future, probably.

Still, everything from the first GTA to Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Grand Theft Auto IV, and Grand Theft Auto V are fair game. Who knows? Maybe the professor will even use the non-mainline titles to really drive the point home.