Some selected conferences of interest to Digital Girls are listed below in reverse chronological order. If you know of other conferences you think we’d be interested in please contact us at digitalgirls@education.concordia.ca
Dates: May 13-14, 2005
Location: Spike Island, Bristol
Organizing Body: The Play Research Group in the School of Cultural Studies at the University of the West of England
Conference URL: http://www.playfulsubjects.org
This symposium focused on computer games, computer game play, and computer game players.
Shanly Dixon and Sandra Weber, members of Digital Girls, presented a paper entitled “When is then? Where is t/here? Who is me? Questions of time, space and embodiment in children’s experiences of videogames.”
Abstract:
We argue that playing video games, like all human experience, is embodied, social (even when solitary), cultural, and multi- dimensional, constituted and continuously reconstituted by lived time and space. We focus on a series of unobtrusive observations and on-going conversations with pre-school and school-aged children at play, usually in small self-selected, gender-segregated groups, but sometimes alone. Their play involved video games (on-line and off) in different settings. By playfully (in other words, seriously) considering theoretical notions of lived time, lived space, and lived body, as well as theories of childhood, we offer a close reading of their game experiences.
What does their play look like? What might it feel like? What might it signify? How does their gaming compare to play in other settings? How, for example, are social interactions and role playing within the game space similar or different from children’s social interactions and play in other spaces such as parks, playgrounds, and playrooms? How does the experience of gaming shape (or how is it shaped by) the nature of contemporary childhood? Are gender differences observed in other play contexts perpetuated through video games? For example, do video games provide a space of opportunity for girls to engage in play that isn’t typical “girl play”, allowing girls to step outside these “gendered roles” and behave in atypical ways? What happens when boys and girls play the same games? These are some of the questions we consider, not to answer them in any definitive way, but to rephrase or re-contextualize them.
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