Kenneth Norwood

Computer games are cultural spaces: They represent cultures, are places of cultural practice, and influence knowledge of cultures. Provided that computer games are texts referring to the non-ludic world, it is at the same time surprising and unsurprising that some cultures are disproportionately over-represented whereas others are disproportionately underrepresented. For a number of years now, the field of cultural game studies has focused on marginalized identities in computer games, ranging from gender to class, sexualities, and race.
This seminar is taking a new multi-disciplinary approach specifically to Black and Queer/Quare identities in computer games.
With this seminar, we invite participants to explore the critical intersection between Black, Queer/Quare, and Video Game cultural studies in order to both question and create solutions for a space that has historically been the avenue of the outside community. Questions of how Blackness and Queerness/Quareness are both seen, constructed, and received in a video game framework act as the focal point for this endeavor. Both theory and practice shall be engaged in order to tackle this historically disproportionate representation in the gaming space with hopes of creating new conversations and creations that address an ever-evolving medium. What we play, and who creates it acts as an ongoing motif for this seminar.
Some of the subjects we wish to engage with include general black games studies, Queer/Quare, Black Fem, Black Activism, and Black game design.
After this engagement with various research on the topic of Blackness and Queerness/Quareness in gaming, we expect participants to embark upon their own journeys to construct a digital experience that reflects the crucial conversations we have highlighted. This digital experience can have the form of but is not limited to in-game photography, a digital exhibition in Mozilla Hubs, a digital collage in Padlet, a Wiki, etc.

This seminar will be held in English. All levels of English language proficiency are welcome!