Call For Papers: Annual Graduate Research Conference, University of Miami

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Lev Manovich

The Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Miami is pleased to announce its annual graduate student conference, “Born-Digital: Reformatting Humanities in the 21st Century” to be held March 20-21, 2015. This conference is sponsored by The Joseph Carter Memorial Fund.

In Born-Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives (2008), John Palfrey and Urs Gasser explore how the proliferation of new technologies informs the perceived realities of “digital natives” (those born in the digital age) and the “digital immigrants” who have experienced the movement toward digitization during their lifetime.

Differences among members of these groups include, for example, how they express their identities in real and virtual spaces, how they perceive their level of connectedness to others, and how they express themselves creatively. Comprising both “native” and “immigrant” scholars and students, the digital humanities are a key field in which these differences play out–an already digital (born-digital) phenomenon as well as a field undergoing digitization.

This conference considers how humanities are already digital, the purposes of digitizing the humanities, how “natives” and “immigrants” can work together to deepen our understanding of the human experience, and the advantages and challenges that digital efforts create for scholarship and teaching. What key debates and in-novative projects do the digital humanities foster?

Seeking to provide a platform for new research as well as introduction to the digital humanities for conference attendees, we encourage papers that consider topics from a variety of disciplines and theoretical approaches. University of Miami is particularly interested in papers that consider the digital humanities (DH) from an international perspective.

Potential areas of inquiry include:

  • DH and media
  • DH and the arts
  • DH and computer-based applications
  • DH and data mining
  • DH and peer to peer applications Multicultural and multilingual areas of DH DH and pedadogy
  • DH and crowdsourcing
  • DH and social justice
  • DH and cultural mapping
  • DH and gender studies
  • DH and race

Applicants are invited to submit proposals in English, French, Portuguese, or Spanish.

Proposals should include an abstract of 200 words, the author’s name, a short bio, and institutional affiliation. Please submit abstracts via e-mail to borndigital2015@gmail.com.

The keynote lecture featuring Dr. Manovich will be free and open to the public. Dr. Manovich will also lead a workshop, but this will require prior registration by participants.

Important Dates:
December 1st, 2014: Abstract Submission Deadline
January 1st, 2015: Notification of Acceptance

Interactive Media & Game Development, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

WPI offers a master of science in Interactive Media & Game Development (IMGD), which focuses on designing immersive, interactive environments.

Whether you’re a college graduate looking to further your education in interactive media, a game industry professional interested in a leadership role, or a professional from another field retooling for the game industry, earning a graduate degree in IMGD will enable you to pursue a diverse range of careers—as a producer, a designer, a teacher, or a project leader in such specific subfields as technology, art, or design.

As an IMGD graduate student, you get to choose your own areas of research and thesis. WPI’s courses provide a base knowledge relevant to the design of interactive media. You select courses from technical, serious games or management focus areas that allow you to tailor the degree to suit your individual interests and career goals. By designing, developing, and evaluating a substantial group project or by working on a thesis with a novel scholarship as a capstone experience, IMGD graduate students become qualified for the career of their dreams.

For more information about the program, visit their website and request an information package.

Announcing ‘After New Media’ -­‐ an Online, Open Access Course, Goldsmiths University

Goldsmiths’ University postgraduate module After New Media has now been released as an open access, online course.

This course builds on, and challenges, existing approaches to media by tracing the transition from debates on new media to debates on mediation. ‘Mediation’ takes us from a more spatial, black-boxed approach to separate media, and separate aspects of the media (production, content, reception) towards a more temporal approach which is often invoked but rarely developed.

The course will ask what it means to study ‘the media’ as a complex process which is simultaneously economic, social, cultural, psychological and technical. It will trace the origins of this question in debates on remediation that are critical of new media teleology (and its links to capital), and it will trace the evolution of this question through a range of philosophical and contextual approaches which will frame the concept of mediation in relation to creativity, conservatism, change and continuity.

In the context of specific media events such as the LHC project at CERN, the current global financial crisis (the Credit Crunch), the world’s first face transplant, the ongoing quest for life on Mars and the emergence of intelligent media, the course will investigate the relation between the event and its mediation. This course asks, would it be more accurate to say that rather than being represented by the media, these events are performed through mediation, and, if events are performative, then how should we respond to them in our critiques?

The course is best viewed using the iTunes U app or via the iTunes U website here, but the podcast lectures will also be available soon on the Goldsmiths University website. Lectures and additional material including videos and slides will be released on a weekly basis throughout November, December and January and will remain available for review until September 2015. A ‘liquid reader’ accompanies this course and students and participants will be invited to contribute to this with their own articles, essays or image-based responses.

For further details please email ben.craggs@gold.ac.uk
Goldsmiths, University of London

Redefining What It Means To Talk In The Age Of Smartphones (NPR)



The following is an excerpt from an article by Allie Caren of NPR’s All Tech Considered.

Of all of the things that were a big deal as a sprouting toddler, learning to talk was one of the major milestones.

“Ma-Ma,” we uttered, wide-eyed, to camcorder lenses and disbelieving parents. “Da-Da.”

Talking is a big part of who we are as humans: as families, as business partners — as a society. It’s arguably one of the most powerful forms of expression, alongside writing and art. We use our voices to ask questions, to deliver bad news, to tell someone we love them.

But the way we talk to each other is changing. The uniqueness of our voices is being drowned out by the pitter-patter of keyboards; we’re always typing, texting, responding.

“People use these technologies to sort of fill in the gaps around the communication that they do with people,” Aaron Smith says.

He notes that sometimes there are things that are hard to tell people in person. Shooting them a text or an email is often just easier, more convenient and more efficient.

But that “time-sensitive” expectation — being “too reachable” — can be stressful.

Technology has added to the already-silent staleness of elevator rides, subway commutes and cross-country flights so much that it’s almost more awkward not to be holding a phone than it is to be looking around, observing, hoping for someone to say “hi” to.

According to a 2012 Pew survey, 67 percent of cellphone owners found themselves checking their phone for messages, alerts or calls — even when they didn’t notice their phone ringing or vibrating; and 29 percent of cellphone owners described their phone as “something they can’t imagine living without.”

Can you relate to the habit of excessively looking at your phone? In the age of smartphones, are we growing increasingly addicted to information? To learn more about the effects of smartphones on communication, read the rest of Allie Caren’s article over on NPR.

CFP: History of Gender in Games; Montreal, Canada; June 26-27, 2015

History of Gender in Games

Bilingual Conference (French/English)
June 26-27, Grande Bibliothèque (Montreal, Canada)

Since the beginning of the 1990s, many scholars have shown concern for the plethora of gender stereotypes and sexist narratives in video games, as well as for the lower percentage of female players and of female game designers. Over time, the solutions advanced to avoid sexism and to bridge the gaps between men and women followed three different trends:

First Wave of Game Feminism
Second Wave of Game Feminism
Third Wave of Game Feminism

The Conference:
Presented in partnership with TAG (Technoculture, Arts and Games, Concordia University), CMS|W (Comparative Media Studies | Writing, MIT), Canada Research Chair In Game Studies & Design (Concordia University), LUDOV (Laboratory for the Documentation and Observation of Video Games, UdeM), Homo Ludens (UQAM), and BAnQ (Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec), this second edition of the Game History Annual Symposium will not only provide opportunities to review the history of gender in games, but also to document the emergence of a “third wave” of game feminism.

*Professionals and scholars from any and all disciplines are invited to submit a proposal in French or in English that would fit in one of these four tracks:

Track 1: Game Feminism
Invited speakers: Suzanne De Castell and Jennifer Jenson, co-founders of Feminists in Games (FIG)

How have studies of gender in games evolved in the past decades? Have scholars found ways to work on this topic without essentializing gender differences and homogenizing the category “woman?” How can we describe the third wave of game feminism in comparison with the first and the second ones? How can studies of gender in computer games benefit from studies of gender in “traditional games” (role-playing games, board games, dolls, etc.)?

Track 2: Game Representations
Invited speaker: Adrienne Shaw, author of Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 2015)

How have gender representations in games changed? What similarities and differences can be observed between those found in computer games and those found in “traditional” games? Are stereotypical protagonists still pervasive, or there is more room for nuanced, androgynous, and queer avatars? Are there more serious games, indie games, or machinima that challenge stereotypes, educate players on gender issues or question heteronormativity?

Track 3: Game Design
Invited speaker: Brie Code, Lead programmer of Child of Light (Ubisoft, 2014)

How has the participation of women as players and developers transformed game design? Has the game industry created new genres that are more appealing to women? Has it incorporated, in traditional genres, new elements that attract female players? Does the evolution of game design reflect a change of values regarding gender equality or a better tolerance of diversity? Do computer games provide more freedom than “traditional” games in terms of gameplay?

Track 4: Game Culture
Invited speaker: Todd Harper, author of The Culture of Digital Fighting Games: Performance and Practice (Routledge, 2013)

How have gender dynamics evolved in game communities? Have those communities opened up to female players and gaymers? To what extend are sexism and sexual harassment still pervasive in geek culture? Are there new pockets of resistance? How and in what areas has the game industry changed its marketing to reach wider audiences than the core young male demographic?

Abstract Submission:
Proposals of 800 words (plus bibliography) should be sent to GameHistoryMTL@gmail.com before January 11, 2015.

The proposals should be anonymous, include a title, and provide a clear synopsis for a 20-minute presentation. In your email, please specify which track you want to be part of, provide your name, affiliation, and a short biography.

Submissions will be reviewed by members of the scientific committee. A double-blind peer review publication project will be launched after the conference.

Click here for the full posting on the CFP website.

The Robotic Baby Penguin That Spies For Scientists

The following is an excerpt from NPR’s “All Tech Considered,” by Priska Neely

“Even this early model, a little penguin rover with clearly visible wheels, was accepted into the huddle. Later models, like the one shown in the video below, had the tires concealed.” -NPR All Tech Considered

Many penguins tracked in Antarctica have data-collecting devices underneath their skin. Usually, researchers have to get close to them and use hand readers to pick up a signal from the devices — which freaks the penguins out.

Yvon Le Maho, who has been studying penguins for more than 40 years, decided to tackle that problem.

“I thought maybe we can use rovers,” Le Maho says.

He got the idea to use a remote-controlled, wheeled device disguised as a penguin to infiltrate the colony about seven years ago. Turns out, it works. Le Maho and other scientists at the University of Strasbourg in France published a paper about their work with rovers in the journal Nature Methods last Sunday.

Le Maho and his team equipped some penguins with heart monitors and saw that when the rovers approached instead of humans, stress levels stayed low.

After a few model tweaks, they made a fluffy baby penguin that they call a “chick cam.”…With this special access, the chick cam got a shot of an emperor penguin laying an egg — a moment that hadn’t been captured before.

To read the full article and watch a clip of the “penguin cam” in action, click over to NPR.

 

The Internet Archive, Trying to Encompass All Creation (NYT)

The following is an excerpt from The New York Times. The full article by David Streitfeld is available to read here.

The Internet Archive occupies a converted church in San Francisco’s Richmond District.Credit David Rinehart.

Brewster Kahle is a librarian by training and temperament. In the mid-1990s, when many saw the nascent World Wide Web as a place to sell things, he saw it as data that cried out to be preserved and cataloged. Later, he widened his scope to include material — film, books, music — that was not native to the web but could be digitally gathered there.

By most standards, Mr. Kahle has been pretty successful. The Internet Archive serves from two to three million visitors a day with such tools as the Wayback Machine, which provides snapshots of 435 billion Web pages saved over time. The archive has seven million texts (you could call them books), 2.1 million audio recordings, and 1.8 million videos. It is an immense library.

Mr. Kahle has even bigger dreams, however. With a limited staff, the archive can conserve only so much. But if anyone can become a curator, the archive may one day resemble one of those Borgesian fantasies of the Total Library, a place that not only collects the world but becomes it.

“We thought the machines were going to save us — crawling the web, digitizing the books, organizing the information — but we were wrong,” Mr. Kahle said. “Communities of people are at the heart of curation.”

At an event Tuesday night at the converted San Francisco church that serves as the archive’s headquarters, the nonprofit’s staff showed off exactly how it and communities are going to be “building libraries together.”

To learn more about the project ideas being discussed surrounding community building of even more diverse digital archives, read the full article over on The New York Times website.

 

GradTalks Series at UO

Have You Heard of TED Talks? Try out the GradTalks Series!

The Graduate Student Association (GSA) and the Barn Light are excited to announce their first GradTalks series!

The series will feature graduate students and faculty speaking about their work and research in a fun, casual environment. This is a great opportunity for grad students to practice sharing their work with an interdisciplinary audience.

Wednesdays, November 12th & December 10th both at 7:30pm @ The Barn Light.
GSA is still looking for speakers for their first events: Wednesday, November 12th and Wednesday, December 10th, both at 7:30pm @ The Barn Light.

For more information about the events and how you can apply to be a speaker or set up a GradTalk, click here.

UO Annual Graduate Student Research Forum

Win $1,000 for showing off your work at the 6th Annual Graduate Student Research Forum!

The Graduate Student Research Forum is a one-day conference held annually at the University of Oregon to showcase research and creative expressions by graduate students in all programs. The Grad Forum began in 2010, making this the Forum’s sixth year!

Highlights include:
12 themed interdisciplinary panels.
Mid-day catered poster session.
Prize opportunity for panelists and poster presenters.
After-event social hosted by graduate student groups.

The Forum will take place in the Ford Alumni Ballroom on February 20, 2015 from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm. 

The top presenters will receive sponsored awards up to $1,000. 

For more information about the Graduate ResearchForum click here

Around the O recapped the Grad Forum Poster Session with an article and video. Click here to see the full article.