Virtual Encounters-Video Games, a panel at (dis)junctions Graduate Conference, Apr 5-6. DEADLINE Feb 11

full name / name of organization: 
university of California, Riverside

Video games are a space in which encounters are enacted on many different levels. There are encounters within the game's narrative space; encounters at the interface of player and narrative; and encounters within the external gaming space (think two-player games). These encounters can also be broken down into player-computer and player-player encounters. This panel invites papers that explore these different spaces of encounter in video games. How do these spaces disrupt normative discourses on sexuality, gender, race, ethnicity, and social class? How do these encounters disrupt or challenge the player's identity? What are some implications of network-mediated encounters in massively multiplayer online games? How might we rethink the structure of encounter between the gaming space and external "reality"?

Abstracts of 250-300 words should be submitted at www.disjunctions2013.org or mailed to disjunctions2013@gmail.com no later than February 11th, 2013.

This is a panel call for the 20th Annual (dis)junctions Humanities and Social Sciences Graduate Conference at the University of California, Riverside. This year's general theme "encountering with(in) texts," examines the impact of situatedness, unexpectedness, and/or unpreparedness on "face to text" encounters with media objects, embodied encounters negotiated through or overdetermined by texts, and representations of "encountering" within texts. Please visit www.disjunctions2013.org for more information on this year's theme, our other subject and discipline specific panel calls, and Keynote Speaker Dr. Nicholas Mirzeoff.