Keynote: Code/Queer Games/Technonormativity
Submission Type
Plenary
Start Date/Time (EDT)
19-7-2024 1:00 PM
End Date/Time (EDT)
19-7-2024 2:00 PM
Location
Algorithms & Imaginaries
Abstract
This presentation offers a set of questions, provocations, and critical examples to think about the ways that digital texts, video games, and even code and AI are technonormative, the implicit and explicit ways that they are embedded with and replicate hegemonic ideals, tropes, and biases about race, gender, sexuality, ability, even technologies themselves. How then might we address and reconfigure these material, cultural, political, and technological definitions, narratives, structures, and power relations? Drawing on queer and feminist game studies, media studies, digital humanities, and popular culture, this presentation offers potential ways to disrupt, play with, and reimagine "defaults" of our increasingly algorithmic and ludonarrative world.
Recommended Citation
Chang, Edmond, "Keynote: Code/Queer Games/Technonormativity" (2024). ELO (un)linked 2024. 32.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/elo2024/algorithmsandimaginaries/schedule/32
Keynote: Code/Queer Games/Technonormativity
Algorithms & Imaginaries
This presentation offers a set of questions, provocations, and critical examples to think about the ways that digital texts, video games, and even code and AI are technonormative, the implicit and explicit ways that they are embedded with and replicate hegemonic ideals, tropes, and biases about race, gender, sexuality, ability, even technologies themselves. How then might we address and reconfigure these material, cultural, political, and technological definitions, narratives, structures, and power relations? Drawing on queer and feminist game studies, media studies, digital humanities, and popular culture, this presentation offers potential ways to disrupt, play with, and reimagine "defaults" of our increasingly algorithmic and ludonarrative world.
Bio
Edmond Y. Chang is an Associate Professor of English at Ohio University. His areas of research include technoculture; race, gender, and sexuality; video games, analog games, LARP, queer game studies; feminist media studies; cultural studies; popular culture; and 20/21C American literature. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on queer American literature, speculative literature of color, virtual worlds, games, everyday media, and writing. Recent publications include “Gaming While Asian” in Made in Asia/America: Why Video Games Were Never (Really) about Us, “‘Do They See Me as a Virus?’: Imagining Asian American (Environmental) Games” in American Studies, “Why are the Digital Humanities So Straight?” in Alternative Historiographies of the Digital Humanities, and “Queergaming” in Queer Game Studies. He also co-edited with Ashlee Bird a special game studies themed issue of the journal Configurations. He is the creator of Tellings, a high fantasy tabletop RPG, and Archaea, a live-action role-playing game. He is also an Assistant Editor for Analog Game Studies and a Contributing Editor for Gamers with Glasses.