International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts

The Velvet Light Trap Issue #81: Power, Freedom, and Control in Gaming

deadline for submissions:
January 15, 2017

full name / name of organization:
The Velvet Light Trap

contact email:
velvetlighttrap.austin@gmail.com

The Velvet Light Trap Issue #81: Power, Freedom, and Control in Gaming

Game studies is no longer an ‘emerging’ field and video games can no longer be considered a ‘new’ or niche medium. The commercial video game industry is now over 40 years old and games are an increasingly intrinsic part of the symbolic terrain of culture. The continued economic growth of the global video game industry is well documented and staggering, and this is reflected in the growing body of academic work that engages with the multifaceted ways that games are designed, created, received, and played. In recent years, scholars have productively moved away from the hotly contested theoretical divisions between ludology and narratology that defined early game studies. Yet, at the same time, games scholarship continues to privilege digital gaming, in the process often sidelining or excluding from academic discussions the vibrant range of game design paradigms and player practices in non-digital gaming, such as board games, card games, and role-playing games. This issue of The Velvet Light Trap considers the place of gaming within media studies and the potential value of utilizing a cultural studies framework for understanding issues of power, freedom, and control in game studies.

As the game industry has matured alongside information and communications technologies, methods of production and industry lore have become normalized as the scope and diversity of games being produced becomes ever more richly nuanced. Triple-A franchises, such as Grand Theft Auto, Fallout, and Madden NFL, are gaming blockbusters, with production teams of hundreds, production budgets of millions, and revenue in the billions. The success of the mainstream industry combined with digital distribution has also opened up niches for thriving independent and underground game scenes, where titles as varied as Undertale, Depression Quest, The Stanley Parable, and Papers, Please, have interrogated the act of play itself while expanding conceptions of what forms and functions games can take.

The increasing complexity of the globally networked gaming industry demands scholarly engagement from a variety of perspectives. The scholarly turn to games and gaming is producing a groundswell of work that parses the disparate yet often interrelated patterns of more micro-level historicity and phenomena, such as game aesthetics and narrative engagement; player identity and communities; emergent cultures and practices the circumscribed agency of designers; and issues of local production, histories, and archives. Scholarship on analog formats like role-playing games and board games have foregrounded the importance of looking beyond the digital, highlighting the economic and cultural contexts of a broader range of gaming and play practices.

This issue of The Velvet Light Trap seeks to build upon this body of research and further consider how games reproduce popular ideas about identity, including issues of gender, race, class, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, ability, etc., through characters, gaming worlds, play, design, and performance. Which voices, perspectives, and sensibilities are privileged in gaming culture, and how can the gaming industry become more inclusive and self-reflective about the practices it engages in and choices it makes? How are communities traditionally marginalized in the gaming economy asserting greater agency? How are issues of power, freedom, and play negotiated, challenged, or reinscribed in the various games and gaming practices marking today’s increasingly expansive media and cultural landscape?

Other possible areas of inquiry in digital and analog gaming include but are not limited to:

● Theories of play
● Gaming pedagogy
● Archive/Collection
● Game design (development & production); designer agency
● Labor, locality, and the global commercial market
● Global gaming (Non-U.S. products or cultures)
● Marketing and distribution
● Games as ancillary merchandise
● Games as parts of transmedia franchises
● Metagaming and paratextual engagement
● Adaptation (game to film/TV; film/TV to game)
● Gamer culture and identity
● Gender and #Gamergate
● Celebrity
● Digital access and class privilege
● Ludic cartographies
● Mobile apps
● Virtual Reality
● Mods & Freeware

Submission Guidelines
Submissions should be between 8,000 and 10,000 words, formatted in Chicago Style. Please submit an electronic copy of the paper, along with a separate one-page abstract, both saved as a Microsoft Word file. Remove any identifying information so that the submission is suitable for anonymous review. Quotations not in English should be accompanied by translations. Send electronic manuscripts and/or any questions to vltcfp@gmail.com by January 15th, 2017.

About the Journal
TVLT is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal of film, television, and new media. The journal draws on a variety of theoretical and historiographic approaches from the humanities and social sciences and welcomes any effort that will help foster the ongoing processes of evaluation and negotiation in media history and criticism. While TVLT maintains its traditional commitment to the study of American film, it also expands its scope to television and other media, to adjacent institutions, and to other nations’ media. The journal encourages both approaches and objects of study that have been neglected or excluded in past scholarship.

Graduate students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the University of Texas at Austin coordinate issues in alternation, and each issue is devoted to a particular theme. VLT’s Editorial Advisory Board includes such notable scholars as Charles Acland, Richard Allen, Ben Aslinger, Caetlin Benson-Allott, Mark Betz, Corey Creekmur, Michael Curtin, Kay Dickinson, Bambi Haggins, Scott Higgins, Mary Celeste Kearney, Jon Kraszewski, Lucas Hilderbrand Roberta Pearson, Nicholas Sammond, Jacob Smith, Jonathan Sterne, Cristina Venegas. VLT’s graduate student editors are assisted by their local faculty advisors: Mary Beltrán, Ben Brewster, Jonathan Gray, Michele Hilmes, Lea Jacobs, Derek Johnson, Vance Kepley, Shanti Kumar, Charles Ramírez Berg, Thomas Schatz, and Janet Staiger.

Speculative Fictions and Socio-Ecologies of the Americas

deadline for submissions:
January 13, 2017

full name / name of organization:
American Literature Association

contact email:
nmerola@risd.edu

The Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE) seeks proposals for the panel “Speculative Fictions and Socio-Ecologies of the Americas” to be held at the Annual Conference of the American Literature Association in Boston, Massachusetts on 25-28 May 2017.

This panel seeks submissions that examine the ways in which North American, Caribbean, Central American, and South American authors have used the conventions and techniques of speculative fiction (including science fiction and magical realism) to represent and respond to socio-ecological circumstances, events, and issues.

By 13 January 2017, please send 300-500 word abstracts and one-page CVs to Nicole Merola at nmerola@risd.edu. Please include your contact information, academic affiliation, and any A/V requests.

This ALA panel is sponsored by ASLE. While you do not need to be a member of ASLE to submit a proposed abstract for an ALA panel, presenters must be or become ASLE members before the ALA conference in order to participate in an ASLE-sponsored panel.

Compared to film, TV and the novel, science fiction theatre is not a widely discussed topic. But, whilst there is only one book from the 1990s that lists the history of sf plays, there is a long legacy of staging the fantastical, including the importance of Karel Čapek’s R.U.R. (1920) in coining the term ‘robot’. With contemporary mainstream plays such as Constellations, The Nether, Mr Burns and X, sf theatre may be experiencing something of a revival. There are an increasing number of sf theatre companies worldwide as well as a new anthology in sf plays.

Foundation seeks articles for a special issue on science fiction and theatre, to be published in winter 2017. Why is sf not analysed as often in theatre than other media? What is lost and what is gained when a text is adapted for the stage? Are there any genre tropes that cannot be staged effectively in theatre? What tropes work particularly well for the stage? All topics and methodologies are welcome including (but not limited to) stage depictions of the future, constructions and representations of sf tropes, performing the non- and post-human, space-time on stage, and adaptations of sf films and novels.

Please send submissions of up to 6000 words by 5th February 2017 to journaleditor@sf-foundation.org, attaching the file in either .rtf or .doc format. For questions about formatting, please see the style guide at www.sf-foundation.org; for all other enquiries, please contact Susan Gray at susan.gray87@gmail.com

Technoculture’s Ongoing Call for Projects and Papers (Continuous Publication)

deadline for submissions:
December 31, 2999

full name / name of organization:
Technoculture: An Online Journal of Technology in Society

contact email:
inquiries@tcjournal.org

Technoculture is accepting both creative works that use new media, preferably on the subject of technology, and critical essays from a broad range of academic disciplines that focus on cultural studies of technology.

Essays we publish examine the topic technology and society, or, perhaps, technologies and societies. This call is ongoing and open topic, and we encourage a broad definition of technology. Topics could include depictions of technologies that treat a wide range of subjects related to the social sciences and humanities.

As a journal, we are interested in a conception of technology and the humanist impulse that pushes beyond contemporary American culture and its fascination with computers; we seek papers that deal with any technology or technologies in any number of historical periods from any relevant theoretical perspective.

Topics might include:

The use of technology by youth, especially beyond or other than their use of social media
The use of technology by older individuals, especially beyond or other than their use of social media
The use of technology by marginalized individuals, especially beyond or other than their use of social media
The access problem today
Technology and its implications for both oppression and liberation
Community uses of technology, especially to make or hinder change of various kinds
Medical issues and technologies
Intellectual property concerns, especially patents and trademarks, and in different historical moments
Literary and cinematic descriptions of technology in any historical period such as Bellamy’s Looking Backward or Blade Runner
Use of technology from non-Western perspectives
Class and its implications in the use (or lack of use) of technology
Game studies (especially in the form of or delivered via playable online games)
Music, theater, and other plastic arts and the use of technology by artists
Sound and silence, and especially noise, the latter especially in positive senses and applications
Alternative forms of print texts and especially of “books” and games
Work and labor issues
Leisure
We also publish creative works, but these must use media (all forms with the exception of print type artifacts) in new or exciting ways. No print type creative texts accepted. This might include:

Audio works
Video works
Digital images, especially those that use digital manipulation or retro images and aren’t just images straight from the camera
Digital poems
Other digitally enhanced or produced creative works, so long as they are stored on our server and otherwise self-contained on our website
Creative works can be on any subject (while critical articles and essays must be on the subject of technology)

For critical articles, we would like to move beyond print texts delivered via virtual means though we do not (yet) insist on native hypertexts or extended use of media. We especially encourage critical articles that are themselves games and/or interactive texts of various sorts.

We will publish scholarly/critical papers in a citation style appropriate to the home disciplines of the authors (MLA preferred).

We publish art work and especially media designed for display/dissemination on a computer monitor including still images, video or audio. We also publish documentation of art installations and exhibitions.

Creative and critical works published in Technoculture are published continuously; we will close off each year’s volume on 31 December of each year and rollover all submissions in process at that time to the next year automatically.

All critical and creative works are peer reviewed.

We encourage inquiries at inquiries at tcjournal dot org for reviews of all sorts of materials (books, movies, theater, games, objects and so on, all on the subject of technology), though for reviews, we do want you to inquire first! Reviews must be timely: their subject must have a copyright, patent or licensing date of no more than two or three years old from the date of inquiry.

In all events, we are not interested in “how to” pedagogical papers that deal with the use of technology in the classroom. PLEASE do not inquire about pedagogical essays.

Authors of all materials are welcome to submit abstracts and inquiries for critical works, creative works and reviews to inquiries at tcjournal dot org. Formal submissions of all works will be by Submittable; please visit and sign up for a Submittable account (if you do not yet have one) at https://technoculture.submittable.com and submit your work there.

Gaming Disability: Disability Perspectives on Contemporary Video Games

Edited by Dr Katie Ellis, Dr Mike Kent & Dr Tama Leaver
Internet Studies, Curtin University

Abstracts Due 15 February 2017

Video games are a significant and still rapidly expanding area of popular culture. Media Access Australia estimated that in 2012 some twenty percent of gamers were people with a disability, yet, the relationship between video gaming, online gaming and disability is an area that until now has been largely under explored. This collection seeks to fill that gap. We are looking for scholars from both disability studies and games studies, along with game developers and innovators and disability activists and other people with interest in this area to contribute to this edited collection.

We aim to highlight the history of people with disabilities participating in video games and explore the contemporary gaming environment as it relates to disability. This exploration takes place in the context of the changing nature of gaming, particularly the shift from what we might consider traditional desktop computer mediation onto mobile devices and augmented reality platforms. The collection will also explore future possibilities and pitfalls for people with disabilities and gaming.

Areas of interest that chapters might address include

· Disability narratives and representation in gaming

· Accessibility of gaming for people with disabilities

· Mods, hacks and alterations to games and devices for and by people with disabilities

· Augmented reality games and disability

· Disability gaming histories

· Mobile gaming platforms and disability

· Specific design elements (such as sound) in terms of designing accessible games

· Gaming, television and disability

· Future directions for disability and gaming

Submission procedure:

Potential authors are invited to submit chapter abstracts of no more than 500 words, including a title, 4 to 6 keywords, and a brief bio, by email to Dr Mike Kent by 15 February 2017. (Please indicate in your proposal if you wish to use any visual material, and how you have or will gain copyright clearance for visual material.) Authors will receive a response by 15 March 2016, with those provisionally accepted due as chapters of approximately 6000 words (including references) by 15 June 2016. If you would like any further information, please contact Mike Kent.

About the editors:
The editors are all from the Department of Internet Studies at Curtin University and have a history of successfully publishing edited collections in the areas of and gaming, disability, and new media.

Dr Katie Ellis is an Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Internet Studies at Curtin University. Her research focuses on disability and the media extending across both representation and active possibilities for social inclusion. Her books include Disability and New Media (2011 with Mike Kent), Disabling Diversity (2008), Disability, Ageing and Obesity: Popular Media Identifications (2014; with Debbie Rodan & Pia Lebeck), Disability and the Media (2015; with Gerard Goggin), Disability and Popular Culture (2015) and her recent edited collection with Mike Kent Disability and Social Media: Global Perspectives (2017).

Dr Mike Kent is a senior lecturer and Head of Department in the Department of Internet Studies at Curtin University. Mike’s research focus is on people with disabilities and their use of, and access to, information communication technology and the Internet. His other area of research interest is in higher education and particularly online education, as well as online social networking platforms. His book, with Katie Ellis, Disability and New Media was published in 2011 and his edited collection, with Tama Leaver, An Education in Facebook? Higher Education and the World’s Largest Social Network, was released in 2014. His latest edited collection, with Katie Ellis, Disability and Social Media: Global Perspectives is available 2017, along with his forthcoming edited collections Massive Open Online Courses and Higher Education: What went right, what went wrong and where to now, with Rebecca Bennett and Chinese Social Media Today: Critical Perspectives with Katie Ellis and Jian Xu.

Dr Tama Leaver is an Associate Professor in the Department of Internet Studies at Curtin University. He researches online identities, digital media distribution and networked learning. He previously spent several years as a lecturer in Higher Education Development, and is currently also a Research Fellow in Curtin’s Centre for Culture and Technology. His book Artificial Culture: Identity, Technology and Bodies was released through Routledge in 2012 and his edited collections An Education in Facebook? Higher Education and the World’s Largest Social Network, with Mike Kent, was released in 2014 through Routledge, and Social, Casual and Mobile Games: The Changing Gaming Landscape, with Michele Wilson, was released through Bloomsbury Academic in 2016.

Pippi to Ripley 4: Gender and Sexuality in Fantasy, Science Fiction and Comics

deadline for submissions:
January 15, 2017

full name / name of organization:
Katharine Kittredge

contact email:
kkittredge@ithaca.edu

Pippi to Ripley 4:Sex and Gender in Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Comics

Ithaca College, April 21-22, 2017

Keynote: SAMMUS performs her acclaimed nerdcore hip-hop and talks about race, geekdom, and feminism.

Special guest: Breakout YA author LJ Alonge

Pippi to Ripley 4 is an interdisciplinary conference with a focus on women and gender in imaginative fiction. We invite papers devoted to fictional characters in all media, including: comics, films, television, and video games as well as in folklore, mythology, and children’s and young adult literature. This year’s conference includes a special focus on:

Fan Intersectionality: Race, Gender and Sexuality in Fan Communities

But we also welcome paper proposals on all aspects of female/gender queer representation within an imaginative context, including but not limited to:

•Young female and queer characters, especially in media for young adults and children (The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Song of the Lioness, His Dark Materials, The Runaways, Power Pack)
•Women and their place in futuristic or other worlds (Dystopic Fiction, Classic Science Fiction, Fantasy Worlds, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Babylon 5, Firefly)
•Female and queer protagonists in urban fantasy and paranormal romance (Buffy, Anita Blake, Sookie Stackhouse, Clary Fray)
•Gender politics after the apocalypse (Revolution, Falling Skies, Oryx and Crake, Y: The Last Man)
•Teaching imaginative fictive/offering imaginative fiction-based programming at all levels (Buffy-based courses; graphic novel units, YA dystopias, children’s fantasy)
•Female and queer characters in updated/adapted fairy tales (Once Upon a Time, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, Snow White and the Huntsman, Grimm)
•The women of superhero films/television with a special focus on differently abled and gender non-conforming characters (Jessica Jones, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Agents of SHIELD)
•Female-focused comic book series (Ms. Marvel,Wonder Woman, Pretty Deadly, Rocket Girl)

•Horrific women and women in horror (American Horror Story, Lamia, Carrie, Mama)
•Science fiction and reproductive body horror (Alien franchise, Twilight, Bloodchild)
•Cyberpunk and the redefinition of gender (William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Charles Stross)

Please send a 300-500 word abstract by January 15, 2017, to Katharine Kittredge, Ithaca College, Department of English, kkittredge@ithaca.edu.

Dark Arts Journal is currently taking submissions for two separate calls:

The Dark Arts Journal 3.1

The Dark Arts Journal is pleased to announce a call for papers for issue 3.1 for the topic of “Gothic Studies Today.” We invite innovative submissions on any aspect of the field of Gothic studies as it stands, including philosophical, theoretical or inter-disciplinary approaches to the area. Possible topics may cover, but are by no means limited to the following ideas:

Gothic studies and philosophy or literary theory
The interdisciplinary Gothic – theology/biblical studies/politics/art/media/sciences
Contemporary challenges or debates in Gothic studies
New methodologies or emergent Gothic fields in culture, media, text or society
Gothic history – new approaches to Gothic texts, interrogations of the Gothic canon etc.
All submissions should be emailed to darkartsjournal@gmail.com for the attention of the editor with the subject line “Dark Arts 3.1 Submission.” Papers should be between 4000-5000 words and use the MHRA style guide for referencing and footnotes. We welcome contributions from scholars at any stage in their careers, but preference will be given to postgraduate and early career researchers.

The deadline for submissions is 31st December 2016.

***

The Dark Arts Journal 3.2 Special Issue: Gothic Capitalism

Capitalism: for some the source of modern evil, for others a being of monstrous power to be worshipped, for Marx, an inherently haunted phenomenon. Recent years has seen a two way exchange emerge between New Economic Critics now reading the market as inherently spectral and cultural scholars focusing on the presence of money in classic gothic tales; from Ebeneezer Scrooge being haunted by his financial partner, to Dracula bleeding money, to Edgar Allan Poe’s fictional doubles signifying emerging understandings of corporate personhood. Since the 2008 crash, an event that saw the devastating destruction encapsulated within the market inflicted on a global scale, more and more questions are being asked about how we understand finance, the market, and whether modern capitalism can survive, or indeed, if we can survive modern capitalism. We therefore invite submissions on the theme of Gothic Capitalism for a themed edition.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

*Evil bankers

*Possessed commodities, or gothic commodification of the body

*The monstrous market

*Gothic formulations of accumulation, capitalist competition, and debt

*Neoliberalism in the gothic

*Gothic understandings of capitalism i.e. zombie banks

*Capitalist re-readings of classic gothic texts and films

*The Gothic as a commodity, gothic advertising, gothic tourism

*Money as a haunted concept and/or item

Submissions should be between 6000-9000 words and use the MHRA style guide for referencing and footnotes. We welcome contributions from scholars at any stage in their careers, but preference will be given to postgraduate and early career researchers.

The deadline for submissions is the 8th January 2017. Submissions should be sent to gothiccapitalism@gmail.com

For more information, please visit https://thedarkartsjournal.wordpress.com/.