cfp.english.upenn.edu

Call for Papers for a Committee-Sponsored Electronic Roundtable on “Teaching and Games” at MLA 2013

Building on several panels at the 2012 MLA Convention that separately considered digital pedagogy (“Building Digital Humanities in the Undergraduate Classroom,” “Digital Pedagogy,” and “New Media, New Pedagogies”) and games ("Digital Narratives and Gaming for Teaching Language and Literature" and "Close Playing: Literary Methods and Video Game Studies"), this electronic roundtable will generate discussions about the use of games in the teaching of literature, languages, and/or writing.

More than simple discussion, however, we will highlight concrete implementations of games in the classroom. Presenters will engage in informal discussion or offer interactive electronic demonstrations, lasting no more than 4 minutes. These presentations will take place at stations with appropriate audiovisual equipment around the meeting room. The remainder of the session’s time will allow the audience to circulate among stations, asking questions of the presenters. Those attending the session will leave with discrete assignments, activities, or ideas that they could build on in designing their own courses.

We welcome abstracts for presentations on any topic linking games and pedagogy, including the following practices:

• Games for language acquisition
• Interpretive games (e.g., the Ivanhoe game)
• Games as platforms for discussions or activities
• Gamification (as subject, as method); critiques of gamification (as subject, as method)
• Student- or group-designed games
• Games played inside/outside the classroom
• Game modification
• Social games in the context of a social/classroom space

Types of games may include but are not limited to the following:

• Video games
• Board / card games
• Virtual Worlds / MMORPGs
• Alternate Reality Games (ARGs)
• Social games (e.g., Cow Clicker, Farmville, The Nethernet)
• Spatial Games (e.g., foursquare, Shadow Cities, geocaching)

This roundtable session will feature up to eight presenters. Presenters are welcome from a broad range of institutions with a range of contexts and budget demands. Selection of participants will be based on a cross-spectrum of styles, classrooms, student experience, successes, and failures.

Send 300-word abstracts and bio to brian.croxall@emory.edu by 15 March 2012. N.B. All panelists will need to be MLA members (or have their membership waived) by April 7th.

I am organizing this session on behalf of the MLA’s Committee on Information Technology.