[Air-L] CFP - Extending Play: The Sequel

[Heewon Kim]

Please consider submitting your work to our second Extending Play
conference. Apologies for cross-posting!

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TITLE: Extending Play: The Sequel (Deadline extended to Dec 12)

*Are we the species that plays—or are we better understood as the species
that repeats?*

Walter Benjamin suggests that, “For a child repetition is the soul
of play.” Is playalways at its core a form of *re-*play, an iteration of an
earlier moment that resists a complete recurrence, yet is found in a series
or sequence? We accept replication as a matter of course: Successful games
and films always already have a sequelin the works, fashion is fueled by a
recycling of its past, and images are increasingly manipulated to mimic the
earlier eras of photographic technique. But what is the impact of these
repeats, echoes, and continuations? And how do we understand the experience
of play as a chain of sequels in the age of digital surrogates, cybernetic
archives and networks of distributed storage?

*Extending Play: The Sequel* asks how conceptions of repetition, iteration,
mimesis, chronography and sequence emerge through the dynamics and
modalities of play in an increasingly repetitive, yet always playful world.
We aim to continue the mission of the previous Extending Play conference,
to entertain all approaches to the traditions, roles, and contexts
of play that extend its definition and incorporation into far-flung and
unexpected arenas. With The Sequel, we hope to focus on how play is
culturally reproduced, repeated, continued, remixed, recycled, resequenced,
and reimagined, and how play re-orders issues of power, affect, labor,
identity, and privacy.

*We invite scholars, students, tinkerers, artists, visionaries, and players* to
the second iteration of the Rutgers Media Studies
Conference: Extending Play, to be held April 17th and 18th, 2015 on the
Rutgers University campus in New Brunswick, NJ. Submissions are welcomed
from scholars working in media studies and related fields across the
humanities and social sciences. Our keynote conversations will include a
conversation between Miguel Sicart <http://miguelsicart.net/> (IT
University of Copenhagen) and Anna Anthropy
<http://auntiepixelante.com/> (Author,
"Rise of the Video Game Zinesters"). Also, Marcus Boon
<http://marcusboon.com/> (York University) will discuss the play of
repetition with another guest who will be announced soon!

*Potential topics* for paper, panel, roundtable, and workshop submissions
include, but are not limited to:

--Sequels, serials, remakes, covers, reprints, reissues, remixes,
remasters, reprises, series, and sagas
--Media industries, including the business of sequels, franchises, and
brands
--Social media and re-circulation, including memes, retweets, repins, and
reblogs
--Resequencing, repetition, and the news industry
--Biomedia, genetic sequencing, and clones
--Sequels and repetition in history and historical knowledge, including
global conflict, archives, and dynasties
--Mimicry, mimesis, and mirroring
--Repetition, continuation, and sequencing in digital networks, databases,
and big data approaches
--Cultural Studies, Media Studies, Game Studies, Fan Studies, Critical
Cultural Studies, Critical Media Studies, Critical Game Studies, and more!

Rutgers Media Studies Conference Extending Play: The Sequel promises to
offer a memorable meeting of ludic inquiry, and to that end, we are looking
to play with standard conference conventions. One track throughout the
conference will be a series of public workshop sessions in which scholars
and practitioners will host roundtable discussions on contemporary issues
that bring together an audience of experts and interested parties. In the
academic panel track, each presenter will have a maximum of 15 minutes to
offer his or her ideas as a presentation or interactive conversation, and
will choose one of the following *methods of presentation:*
--material accompaniment (hand out a zine, scrapbook, postcards, etc)
--performance (spoken word, song, verse, dance, recording, etc)
--limited visuals (a maximum of 3 slides and 25 total words)
--game (create rules and incorporate audience play)


For additional ideas on how to play with media, play with time,
or play with space during your presentation, visit our website at
mediacon.rutgers.edu.

*The deadline for proposals is Friday, December 12, 2014.* We invite
individual proposals, full panel proposals (of four members), and proposals
for roundtable and workshop sessions. Please use the submission form on our
website at http://mediacon.rutgers.edu/submit/ . If you would like to
submit supplementary materials, or have trouble with the form, please send
a 256 word abstract to extendingplay at gmail.com. Notifications of acceptance
will be sent out byFebruary 1, 2015.



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Heewon Kim (ABD)
Lecturer
Department of Communication
School of Communication & Information
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
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