Scholars of virtual worlds, videogames, internet studies, and related fields… please consider submitting a chapter proposal for this endeavor:
Call for book chapter proposals: Avatars, Assembled: The Sociotechnical Anatomy of Digital Bodies
Volume editor: Jaime Banks, West Virginia University
Chapter proposal deadline: July 31, 2016
Summary: Avatars, Assembled will be a curated volume that unpacks videogame and virtual world avatars – not as monolithic phenomena but as sociotechnical assemblages, pieced together from embodied features like weapons and gender to logical features like algorithms and statistics. Each short chapter (~3,000 words) will account for the empirical, theoretical, and popular understandings of very discrete avatar dimensions, while the introduction and conclusion will draw on these chapters (synthesized through the lens of assemblage/actor-network theories) to argue for a more nuanced consideration of avatars-as-assemblages as we work to understand how and why they matter in individual and social experience.
Chapter proposals of ~250-300-words are due by midnight July 31, and specific details can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/16um7OoI2fvgS65EefJmUQInJFHEusSh4qdNW-m5iDfM/edit?usp=sharing
Additionally, please note that accepted authors will be invited to attend a book production workshop/symposium on the Campus of West Virginia University (Morgantown, WV, USA). Although attendance is not required for authorship, it’s highly recommended and a WVU book-production grant will offer at least $400 in travel assistance.
Jaime Banks
Assistant Professor
Department of Communication Studies
West Virginia University
jabanks@mail.wvu.edu
@amperjay