Lecture: Adrienne Shaw, Gaming at the Edge: Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Video Games

March 19, 2015
3:00 PM
Mann Assembly Room, Paterno Library

The DCMI speaker series in Critical Media and Digital Studies features speakers invited to visit Penn State. Its goal is to present critical, rather than merely celebratory perspectives on the study of digital culture and media; to explore emerging perspectives on the politics of the technology industry, software engineering ethics, and the legislative regulation of data collection and analysis; and to integrate with the study of digital culture and media the study of social class, race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, disability, and postcoloniality, as well as non-Western cultural perspectives.

On March 19, 2015, Adrienne Shaw delivered a lecture titled “Gaming at the Edge: Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Video Games.”

Event flyer

Follow-up interview (May 2015)

Description of presentation

Adrienne Shaw’s book Gaming at the Edge represents an intersection of three major fields in media studies: the politics of representation of marginalized groups; ethnographic and qualitative media audience research; and cultural studies approaches to video games. It provides an in-depth look not just at how groups are represented in games, as some previous authors have done, but also at how audiences interact with these representations in ways that are unique to this particular medium. It addresses digital games as part of broader media consumption practices and identity work, looking at the ways games and concerns about representation in them are embedded within the everyday lives of players.

Speaker bio

Adrienne Shaw is an assistant professor in the Department of Media Studies and Production at Temple University and a Media and Communications Ph.D program faculty member. Her primary areas of interest are video games, gaming culture, the politics of representation, and qualitative audience research. Her research has been published in Games and Culture, New Media Studies, and Critical Studies in Media and Communication, among other journals, and she is the author of several book chapters on game studies. Her book Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture was published in January 2015 by the University of Minnesota Press.

Description, from publisher’s Web site

A major new analysis of the representation of marginalized groups in video games

Adrienne Shaw argues that video game players experience race, gender, and sexuality concurrently, revealing how representation comes to matter to participants and considering the high stakes in politics of representation debates. She finds new insight on the edge of media consumption with the invisible, marginalized gamers who are surprising in both their numbers and their influence in mainstream gamer culture.

Other resources

Amazon.com

Publisher’s Web site for Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture

Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture on Facebook

Book Announcement and excerpt from Gaming at the Edge at Culture Digitally

André Tassinari, “We interviewed the gamer culture expert Adrienne Shaw,” Girls Can Game, December 3, 2014

Adrienne Shaw, “On Not Becoming Gamers: Moving Beyond the Constructed Audience,” Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology 2 (June 2013)

Adrienne Shaw, “Do you identify as a gamer? Gender, race, sexuality, and gamer identity, New Media & Society 14.1 (February 2012): 28-44

Adrienne Shaw Web site

Adrienne Shaw on Twitter