It seems like I have been traveling a lot for work (and I have been), but I am very fortunate to once gain hit the road (or really the atmosphere) to give an invited presentation and workshop at Washington State University. Next week, I will be part of WSU’s Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation (CDSC) Spring Symposium, which will be March 7-8, 2018. Here is the schedule:
March 7th: Open Gameplay & Keynote with Matt Swanson
Wednesday, March 7th
5:00-6:00pm, Open Gameplay of Never Alone, Spark 10
6:00-7:00pm, Keynote with Matt Swanson, Spark Atrium
Game Producer and Project Manager Matt Swanson will present the keynote for the CDSC Spring Symposium. Swanson brings over fifteen years of project management, marketing and design experience to his role as Executive Producer at E-Line Media. With a passion for creating games, supporting creative teams, developing inspirational products and a drive for excellence, Matt oversees all aspects of production in E-Line’s Seattle studio. Most recently he guided production through the successful multi-platform worldwide launch of the award-winning Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna). Swanson’s talk will be preceded by open gameplay of Never Alone from 5-6 pm in Spark 10.
March 8th: Symposium and Workshops
Thursday, March 8th, 9:00am-5:30pm
Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation, 4th floor Holland Library
Symposium
9:00-10:00am
Dr. Megan Condis, Assistant Professor of English, Stephen F. Austin State University
Speaking Topic: Gender, Gaming, and Online Culture
Dr. Condis completed her PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her forthcoming book, Gaming Masculinity: Trolls, Fake Geeks, and the Gendered Battle for Online Culture, examines the way video game fans compose their identities online. She is a regular contributor to Unwinnable. She also serves as a member of the Editorial Board for Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities (University of Nebraska Press) and the Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds (Intellect Books). She writes about gender and popular culture on her blog at https://megancondis.wordpress.com/ and on Twitter @MeganCondis.
10:00-11:00am
Dr. Edmond Y. Chang, Assistant Professor of English, Ohio University
Speaking Topic: Technonormativity
Dr. Chang’s areas of interest include technoculture, gender and sexuality, cultural studies, video games, popular culture, and contemporary American literature. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Washington and his dissertation is entitled “Technoqueer: Re/con/figuring Posthuman Narratives.” This past fall, he taught a class at called “Ready Player Two: Critical Approaches to Virtual Worlds and Video Games.” Recent publications include “Queergaming” in Queer Game Studies (University of Minnesota Press) and “A Game Chooses, A Player Obeys: BioShock, Posthumanism, and the Limits of Queerness” in Gaming Representation (Indiana University Press). He is currently working on his first book tentatively called Queerness Cannot Be Designed: Digital Games and the Trouble with Technonormativity.
11:00am-12:00pm
Dr. Kishonna L. Gray, Assistant Professor in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the New College, Arizona State University
Speaking Topic: Intersectionality in Online Environments
Dr. Gray is also a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. She previously served as a MLK Scholar and Visiting Professor in Women & Gender Studies and Comparative Media Studies at MIT. Her work broadly intersects identity and new media although she has a particular focus on gaming. She is the author of Race, Gender, & Deviance in Xbox Live (Routledge, 2014) which as been described by T.L. Taylor “an insightful, original, and compelling piece of research.” Her current monograph is tentatively titled “On Being Black And…The Journey to Intersectionality in Digital Gaming Culture” and is currently under contract with LSU Press. Her work has been featured in both academic and public outlets. She’s is also a featured blogger and podcaster with “Not Your Mama’s Gamer.” Follow her on Twitter @KishonnaGray.
Workshops
1:30pm – 3:30pm
Matt Swanson – An Overview of the Game Creation Process
Edmond Chang – #WeNeedDiverseGames: Close Playing Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Games
3:30pm – 5:30pm
Megan Condis – Introduction to Creating Interactive Games with Twine
Kishonna Gray – Designing Games for Empathy