Game Studies Research Group offers fall lecture series

2:26 p.m., Oct. 8, 2013--The Game Studies Research Group at the University of Delaware will offer a fall lecture series on “Directions in Game Studies.”

The lecture series, sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Research Center, will explore approaches to the expanding field of game studies, examining the many ways video games impact the world.

Research Stories

Chronic wounds

UD's Millicent Sullivan and Kristi Kiick have received a $1.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for research that could provide a new approach to the treatment of chronic wounds.

Prof. Heck's legacy

The American Chemical Society is highlighting the legacy of the late Nobel laureate Richard Heck, the Willis F. Harrington Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Delaware with a digital tribute on its publications website.

• Prof. Heck's legacy
• Parasitic wasp studied
• Graduate Research Forum
• SMART Scholarship

Speakers from a variety of academic disciplines will give an expansive, big-picture vision of how games work across perspectives and through an array of critical lenses, offering a holistic view of the characteristic complexity of the videogame medium.

Sessions in the series are scheduled as follows:

• Thursday, Oct. 17, 4:30 p.m., 231 Lerner Hall, “Toward a Cultural Ludology: Uses for Video Games and Culture.” The speaker will be Phillip Penix-Tadsen, University of Delaware assistant professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies, co-director of the Game Studies Research Group, and author of “Latin American Ludology: Why We Should Take Video Games Seriously (and When We Shouldn’t)” (Latin American Research Review, 2013) and a book in progress, Cultural Code: Video Games and Latin America.

• Thursday, Oct. 24, 4:30 p.m., 213 Lerner Hall, “‘All Your Crap Are Belong to Us’: Reflections on the Theory and Practice of Game Archiving and Preservation from Inside the Learning Games Initiative Research Archive.” The speaker will be Judd Ruggill, Arizona State University assistant professor of social and behavioral sciences, co-director of the Learning Games Initiative, and author of Gaming Matters: Art, Science, Magic, and the Computer Game Medium (University of Alabama, 2011), Fluency in Play: Computer Game Design for Less Commonly Taught Language Pedagogy (CERCLL, 2008), and the forthcoming Tempest: Geometries of Play (University of Michigan).

• Wednesday, Nov. 6, 4:30 p.m., 103 Gore Hall, “Games and the Digital Humanities.” The speaker will be Steven E. Jones, Loyola University Chicago professor of English, co-director of the Center for Textual Studies and Digital Humanities, author of Codename Revolution: The Nintendo Wii Platform (MIT Press, 2012), The Meaning of Video Games: Gaming and Textual Strategies (Routledge, 2008), Against Technology: From the Luddites to Neo-Luddism (Routledge, 2006), and the forthcoming The Emergence of the Digital Humanities (Routledge, 2013)

• Wednesday, Nov. 20, 4:30 p.m., 103 Gore Hall, “In Defense of San Andreas: Representing Race in Grand Theft Auto.” The speaker will be Rachael Hutchinson, University of Delaware associate professor of foreign languages and literatures, co-director of the Game Studies Research Group, author of Nagai Kafu’s Occidentalism: Defining the Japanese Self (SUNY Press, 2011), “Performing the Self: Subverting the Binary in Combat Games” (Games and Culture, 2007) and the book in progress Japanese Culture through Videogames.

• Wednesday, Dec. 4, 103 Gore Hall, “Games + Facebook: Exploring How Social Networks Change Play Dynamics.” The speaker will be Mia Consalvo, Canada Research Chair in Game Studies and Design, Concordia University, author of Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Video Games (MIT Press, 2009) and editor of Sports Videogames (Routledge, 2013) and the Handbook of Internet Studies (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012)