[Air-L] CFP: DiGRA 2017 Workshop: “Gaming the Systems: Towards a More Inclusive DiGRA"

Tue Feb 7 09:53:13 PST 2017

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*DiGRA 2017 Workshop: “Gaming the Systems: Towards a More Inclusive DiGRA”*

What would it mean for Game Studies to be diverse, and what role can DiGRA
play in achieving this? Does the term ‘diversity’ deserve critical scrutiny
in its own right?

In light of corporate initiatives such as Intel’s recent and highly
substantial investment in creating an inclusive workforce, ‘diversity’ can
legitimately claim to be one of the most impactful terms that has ever been
developed in league with humanities and social sciences thinking. On the
other hand, diversity can be seen as a code word for the most comfortable
way in which difference appears to contemporary power structures - and
hence subject to academic critique.

Intel’s recent and widely publicized investment in making their own
workforce more inclusive and diverse[i], as well as increasing diversity in
games and the tech industry broadly, demonstrates that conversations about
representation are finally making headway in corporate sectors. At the same
time, we might question if these business-minded approaches to diversity
are really invested in the more critical types of change diversity is
discussed in relation to in academic conversations.

Moreover, as the industries we are interested in begin to take seriously
questions of their own diversity, we too must take stock of who is
represented in the wide field that is game studies. What can we do to make
our field more inclusive and represent a wider array of perspectives? Might
it even be possible that we could use such efforts in turn to offer a model
for the industries we study as they launch efforts to increase diversity?

As scholars, perhaps the response to this situation is quite predictable:
more research is needed. This DiGRA workshop will pose the question of what
a diverse game studies would look like in both theoretical and practical
registers: partly by gathering theoretical papers and partly by providing a
venue for voicing and testing ideas that can be represented as precedents
to DiGRA and other game studies conferences.

The workshop will balance the question of what other fields have done to
encourage diversity with the question of what scholars of play can bring to
thinking about what academic diversity means in the first place. This will
be a half day workshop on *July 2, 2017, *organized as follows:

*Format and Activities*

12:00-12:30 Opening and Introductions

12:30-13:00 Designing Diversity Guidelines

13:00-15:00 Paper presentation – six papers, 15 minutes each and 5 minutes
of question time.

15:00-15:30 Break and Play Time

15:30-17:00 Co-facilitated Discussion

*Location*

PAR-Arts West North Wing-256 (Collaborative Learning Room)

The University of Melbourne

Parkville 3000.

*Call for Proposals*

We welcome proposals for papers that investigate questions such as, but not
limited to:

·          What have conferences, fields of study and the game industry
done to encourage diverse participation? Can and should DiGRA take a
proactive role in fostering game studies diversity?

·          To what degree is diversity a useful concept? What political
work does it do and can it do in our field? How does it link with concepts
of representation, attention and competition, and to what level are such
concepts already part of the logic of the academy?

·          What potentials do academics interested in play bring to
broadening or questioning the idea of diversity?

·          How diverse is the history of game studies as both theory
and  pedagogy
and to whom does this matter?

·          What is the relation of academic game studies to videogame
business and industry across various regional and national contexts, and to
what degree does this affect diversity?

·          Middleware is often cited as increasing access to game
development, but how diverse are the resources, assets and legal structures
of such tools? What role does the academy play in this area and how could
it be expanded?

·          Who is best positioned to speak on regional issues including
funding and representation, and what power dynamics are at play in the
centrality of the Anglophone academy to DiGRA?

·          Is DiGRA creating a safe space for diverse voices, and what are
best practices models for how DiGRA should do this internally, and pressure
platforms externally? What are the practical issues and how can they be met?

Please send your extended abstract (1500-3000 words) to *Sian Beavers *(
digradiversityworkshop at gmail.com) by *March 6, 2017* at 17:00 CET (9:00
PST). Please note this is an open paper format and you are *not *required
to use the DiGRA template for extended abstracts.

Accepted papers will be included in a Diversity Special Issue of ToDiGRA,
published in 2018, where full papers will be subject to an additional round
of peer-review prior to publication.

Notifications of acceptance will be sent to participants on April 3, 2017.
Full papers (8000 words including references) are due September 15, 2017
for peer review. Camera ready papers for ToDigra publication on November
17, 2017.

Please note participation in the workshop is open to all DiGRA
participants, regardless of acceptance to the workshop. If you plan to
attend the workshop as a participant (not a presenter), please register by
June 15, 2017 by sending an email to *Darshana Jayemanne* at (
digradiversityworkshop at gmail.com).

------------------------------

[i]
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/233716/Intel_to_invest_300_million_in_tech_game_diversity.php

-- 
Adrienne Shaw
Assistant Professor
Temple University
Department of Media Studies and Production
School of Media and Communication
2020 N. 13th St.
Annenberg Hall, room 203A
Philadelphia, PA 19122
telephone: 215-204-6201
fax: 215-214-5402
smc.temple.edu/msp
www.adrienneshaw.com

Office Hours: Tuesday 11am-2pm
Email Hours: M-F 12-2pm

Author of: Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer
Culture, University of Minnesota Press, 2014 (
http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/gaming-at-the-edge)

Founder of the LGBTQ Game Archive: https://lgbtqgamearchive.com/