The department of Game Design at Uppsala University, campus Gotland
Category: Blog
This is the highly informal blog of the GAME-department. We use it mostly to document the things we do outside of running one of the worlds strongest game educations. For information about our education, programs and courses, check the official site at Uppsala University.
Happening Friday! Join us for an on-campus networking event in which students, teachers, and researchers from Uppsala University come together to share their interests in the intersection between gender, psychology, games, and/or transformation!
When: November 15, 2024, 9-11 CET Where: B26, Campus Gotland, Visby Sweden
This event is primarily aimed at students, teachers, and researchers at Uppsala University, although other researchers are welcome to attend. In this event, attendees will discuss their work with one another in the hopes of building collaborations and networks for the future. Researchers from any disciplinary background are welcome.
Funded by CIRCUS at Uppsala University, this is the first networking meetup in our new research network called Transforming Games: Behavior, Identity, Culture, and Community (TAG) joining researchers in Game Design, Gender Studies, and Psychology.
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This series is hosted by the Games & Society Lab at the Department of Game Design, Uppsala University Campus Gotland. The series explores the use of analog role-playing games as vehicles for lasting personal and social change.
Design by Kate Blomgren and Daria Shpak.
Posted on - Comments Off on Queer and Mad Readings in Video Game Studies CategoriesBlog, Guest Lectures
We’re delighted to announce the lecture “Queer and Mad Readings in Video Game Studies” by Cecilia Rodéhn and Marie Dalby! This event is the next in our series Transforming Games: Behavior, Identity, Culture, and Community (TAG), a research network funded by the Centre for Integrated Research on Culture and Society (CIRCUS) at Uppsala University. The network connects researchers from Game Design, Gender Studies, and Psychology in a joint research agenda focusing on the impacts of society on games and vice versa.
Link will be provided to registrants on the day of the event. Make sure to sign in with the same name you used to register.
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Description:
In this talk, Cecilia Rodéhn will discuss mad reading: a mad studies centred method for analysing games. Mad studies is an interdisciplinary field that critically discusses how the social and medical systems create mental illness. Rodéhn will explore mad reading as (1) a situated reading, (2) challenging sanist representations, (3) reading the explicitly mad, (4) revealing where madness is not clearly visible, and (5) maddening games. As a method, it seeks to illuminate sanist representations, but it also has a more utopian and empowering agenda.
Marie Dalby will discuss Dark Souls (2011), a genre-defying video game that has achieved an almost mythical status and is synonymous for difficulty. For the uninitiated, Dark Souls might appear as an odd choice to put in conversation with queer theory. In this talk, Dalby will not investigate representations of queer subjects or queer modes of play; instead, she will employ a Lacanian psychoanalytic perspective to explore what happens to queer readings of games when we abandon identification and look to desire.
Presenters bio:
Cecilia Rodéhn is an associate professor and a senior lecturer at the Centre for Gender Research and Department of Game Design, Uppsala University. Her research focuses on representations of madness and psychiatric hospitals.
Marie Dalby is a Ph.D. student at the Centre for Gender Research and Department of Game Design, Uppsala University. Her research explores the video game Dark Souls (2011) from a queer theory perspective.
This series is hosted by the Games & Society Lab at the Department of Game Design, Uppsala University Campus Gotland. The series explores the use of analog role-playing games as vehicles for lasting personal and social change.
In the Spring of 2023 the team won first price at the Lv. 99 game jam in Singapore, out of 350 submissions! The cash price has been invested in starting a company to develop and publish the game. Their prototype is available on Steam for you to try – Nasal Nomad: Sniffer’s Delight
As the academic year kicks off and we welcome a large batch of new students, we are immensely excited to also send our warmest congratulations and best wishes to some of our current students who are nominated at the Swedish Game Awards (SGA)!
This week they are off to the Swedish Game Awards where they are nominated for Best Design, Best Technology, and Game of the Year(!). https://lnkd.in/dgXTepiK
Fingers are crossed and we wish them the very best of luck on September 6!
