[Air-L] CFP: Closed Systems / Open Worlds ( extended deadline: Sept. 15, 2014)

Jeremy hunsinger jhunsinger at wlu.ca
Tue Aug 19 10:09:41 PDT 2014


Closed Systems / Open Worlds ( extended deadline: Sept. 15, 2014)

Contact:  ClosedandOpenBook at gmail.com
Deadline for précis: 15 September 2014

Edited by: Jeremy Hunsinger (Wilfrid Laurier University), Jason Nolan
(Ryerson University) & Melanie McBride (York University)

This book will consist of explorations at the boundaries of virtual worlds
as enclosed but encouraging spaces for exploration, learning, and
enculturation. Game/worlds like Second Life, OpenSim, Minecraft, and Cloud
Party are providing spaces for the construction of alternatives and
reimaginings, though frequently they end up more as reproductions. We seek
to challenge those spaces and their creativities and imaginings.

These worlds exist as both code and conduct. Code is a modulating multiple
signifier, in that the interpreters of the code vary from human to machine
and that our understanding of the signifier changes the worldliness in
itself. The conduct of both participants and administrators of these spaces
influences how they flourish and then fade. As such the worlds and their
anima/animus are socially constructed fictions where
authors/creators/users, both above and below the actions are sometimes in
concert, yet often in conflict with the space and intentions of the
originators.

This book seeks critically engaged scholars who want to risk the
possibility of change in the face of closed systems. We are looking for
critical or speculative essays that must be theoretically, empirically
and/or contextually grounded chapters of 5000-6500 words plus apparatus.
Doctoral students and non-tenure faculty members will be afforded blind
peer review upon request.

We are aiming for 12 -14 chapters that define the boundaries and thus
likely futures of research on virtual worlds.
Dates
Sept. 15, 2014 – 250 word précis with 5-10 key references
Sept. 30, 2014 –  accept/reject proposals
Feb 1, 2015 – final draft due
July 1, 2015 – feedback from reviewers
September 1, 2015 – final version
December 1, 2015 – in press
Queries and submissions: ClosedandOpenBook at gmail.com

Topics may include:
• alternative and minor game/virtual/etc. worlds
• archeologies/genealogies of virtuality
• augmented and mixed-reality worlds
• distributed cognitions
• early explorations in virtual learning environments
• the freedom of limitations • identity construction and/or identity
tourism
• the limits of simulation and emulation • memories and forgetting in
virtual worlds
• multisensory virtual environments
• multisensory exclusions in virtual worlds
• narratival and post-narratival andragogies, ‘learning worlds’
• negative spaces as learning spaces (bullying, trolling, flaming, etc.) in
virtual worlds
• non-social virtual worlds (dwarf fortress, some forms of minecraft, etc.)
• real world virtual worlds and boundaries (Lego, Hello Kitty, WebKinz,
etc.)
• replication of real world environments/problems
• surrealism, unrealism and constructable alterities of/within virtual
worlds
• transformative virtual classroom • vapourware and virtuality • the
virtuality of learning

-- 
jeremy hunsinger
Director of Cultural Studies
Assistant Professor
Communication Studies
Wilfrid Laurier University

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