Call for Papers
The 3rd Graduate Workshop of the GS OSES will take place from 14th to 16th September. The theme will be "From 'Early Access' and 'Open Worlds' to Game-Cons and Clans: The Production of Spatiality and Community in Contemporary Gaming" and applications are open now.
12 April 2022
From ‘Early Access’ and ‘Open Worlds’ to Game-Cons and Clans:
The Production of Spatiality and Community in Contemporary Gaming
This Graduate Workshop seeks to investigate contemporary video games as an emergent space to be considered under the auspices of Area Studies, with special consideration given to practices, memory politics, and identity negotiation. By bringing together scholars and young professionals from a wide array of disciplines, we aim to advance the dialogue concerning methodological and conceptual approaches for video games in the humanities and social sciences.
We posit the following questions:
- How does the experience of gaming constitute new spaces and contest previous models of spatial conceptions? Both through the content of games and the opportunity to experience games as a collective? How can these be understood within the framework of Area Studies?
- How is gender constructed and portrayed in video games, especially in terms of player perspective, romance, and market-driven realities? Where is the female gaze to be found, or, is the ubiquity of the male gaze reified again in these settings?
- What knowledge production informs the construction of authenticity in gaming, and what potential implications are there to historical memory, the nation-state, and historicity?
- What role do the various gaming-adjacent platforms play? What is the relationship between player and game developer, especially as it pertains to the audience interactions pre- and post-publication?
We invite paper proposals of max. 300 words (title and abstract) to gsoses.conference@ur.de by May 31, 2022. Please include a (max. 2 pages) CV in your application.
For further information, click here.