History Professor Teaches Grant Theft Auto Class at University of Tennessee-cometomedia

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2025-09-20

History Professor Teaches Grant Theft Auto Class at University of Tennessee

History professor Tore Olsson is teaching a class known as ‘Grand Theft America: U.S. History Since 1980 through the GTA Video Games.’ In the class, the professor wields the fictional representation of the US, including the characters, storylines, and urban landscapes, as a tool to provide a framework of real-life events within the United States over the last half-century.

I’m the professor who’s been teaching and writing about American history through Red Dead Redemption. I’m thrilled to announce my new Spring ’26 class @UTK, HIST 150, “Grand Theft America: US History since 1980 through the GTA Video Games.” Full interview: https://t.co/2H6BVJA2vC

— Tore Olsson (@ToreCarlOlsson) September 19, 2025

The GTA franchise is nearly 30 years old, thereby helps record a substantial amount of historical events. GTA Vice City Stories is set in 1984, with Vice City covering the 80s. San Andreas and Liberty Stories provide context for the 90s, and GTAs 3, 4, 5, and eventually 6 will provide historical context fo the twenty-first century, according to an exclusive interview with Tore Olsson conducted by IGN.

“In many ways, the America of today is unrecognizable from its 1980 version. In my class, we’ll explore how all of this came to change – and we’ll use the fictional world of the GTA games as the window for this exploration,” Tore Olsson said. Olsson states that the GTA franchise have always dealt with satirical parodies of the past, noting that he finds the games much more interesting when “their parody rings true.”

The GTA radios are sourced of the games’ sharpest social commentary, drawing an example from the talk radio in Vice City and San Andreas, where various debates were playhed on a single station. Olsson relates this to Ronald Reagan in 1987, when he began deregulating teelvsion and radio with the repeal of 1949’s fairness doctrine, paving the way for networks like Fox News and MSNBC.

Olsson comments that video games have evolved from the margins to the mainstream; the course is now one of the most popular classes at Tore Olsson’s institution. The class was originally slated to launch alongside the release of GTA 6, but GTA 6’s numerous delays prevented this from occurring. Professor Olsson planned for the upcoming game to play a major role in the curriculum, but had to adjust accordingly, stating “that’s why we got a GTA college history class before we got GTA!”