On the evening of Sunday, April 28, I will be skyping into Dr. Rahul Gairola‘s EGL246: “Digital Humanities: Reading and Writing in the Online World” course at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia. The class’s main text is Disrupting the Digital Humanities edited by Dorothy Kim and Jesse Stommel, and they will be reading my “Playing as Making” essay in the collection. I will be speaking as part of the following week in the class:
Topic 8/ Week 10: The Line That Divides Gaming and Living
This week’s lecture begins with a very important question that invokes our childhood days: how have games evolved along with technology, and how can a DH sensibility allow us to rethink the place of humanistic enquiry in the fantasy realm of some of the most sophisticated games that the world has ever seen? The goal of this talk is for students to see and think beyond the notion that “gaming” is unconnected from reality and that it is merely a fantasy discourse meant for children.
Required readings:
Edmond Y. Chang. 2018. “Playing as Making.” DDH, pp.357-368.
Kat Lecky. 2018. “Humanizing the Interface.” DDH, pp.369-376.
Robin Wharton. 2018. “Bend Until It Breaks: Digital Humanities and Resistance,” DDH, pp.377-399.
Keywords:
Gaming, interface, gaming communities, cosplay.
Tasks:
Take notes during the lecture while paying special attention to this week’s keywords and ask any questions about the material presented.
Have a look at the Keywords website for the Critical Gaming Project at the University of Washington. Which keywords interest you most and/or strike a chord with your own research interests?
Tutorial discussion will be based on the readings, as informed by the lecture so please bring your notes and texts for this session.
The title of my presentation is “Playing as Making, Gaming as Inquiry, Digital Games as Digital Humanities.” I wanted to keep the presentation conversational. Here are the handful of slides I provided for the course:
