Call for Papers
Game Studies, Culture, Play & Practice Area
Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA) 45th Annual Conference
February 21-24, 2024
Marriott Albuquerque
Albuquerque, New Mexico
http://www.southwestpca.org
Proposal submission deadline: October 31, 2023
Proposals are now being accepted for the 45th annual SWPACA conference. One of the nation’s largest interdisciplinary academic conferences, SWPACA offers nearly 70 subject areas, each typically featuring multiple panels. For a full list of subject areas, area descriptions, and Area Chairs, please visit http://southwestpca.org/conference/call-for-papers/
The Game Studies, Culture, Play & Practice Area invites papers, panels, and other proposals on games (digital and otherwise) and their study and development. Proposals are welcome from any and all scholars (including graduate students, independent scholars, and tenured, tenure-track, and emeritus faculty) and practitioners (developers, artists, archivists, and so forth). Unusual formats, technologies, and the like are encouraged.
Possible topics include (but are in no way limited to):
- Advertising (both in-game and out)
- Archiving and artifactual preservation
- ARGs
- Design and development
- Economic and industrial histories and studies
- Educational games and their pedagogies
- E-Sports and competitive gaming
- Fan studies
- Foreign language games and culture
- Game art/game-based art (including game sound)
- Game development education
- Game engines and entertainment
- Game genres/types
- Game streaming
- Games and health
- Gender and sexual identity
- Haptics and interface studies
- Hardware/platforms
- Histories of games
- Industry studies
- International/non-US game studies
- Localization
- Mobile gaming
- MOGs, MMOGs, and other forms of online/networked gaming
- Performance
- Pornographic games
- Religion and games
- Representations of race and class
- Representations of space and place
- The rhetoric of games and game systems
- Serious games
- Table-top games and gaming
- Technological, aesthetic, economic, and ideological convergence
- Theories of play
- Transmedia and games
The Game Studies, Culture, Play & Practice Area is international in scope and emphasizes diversity, an openness to innovative approaches and presentations, and the energetic practice of post-conference collaboration and publication. The Area was established in 2005 as a division of the Computer Culture Area, and became a standalone area in 2010. In addition to organizing conference panels, roundtables, and workshops, the Game Studies, Culture, Play & Practice Area offers formal and informal mentoring, organizes outings, and hosts evening social events.
- Chair: Judd Ruggill (jruggill@arizona.edu)
- Research Coordinator: Jennifer deWinter (dewinter1@gmail.com)
- Social Media Coordinator: Michael Anthony DeAnda (madeanda@gmail.com)
- Special Events Coordinator: Carly Kocurek (ckocurek@iit.edu)
- Graduate Student Mentor: Chris Hanson (cphanson@syr.edu)
All proposals must be submitted through the conference’s database at http://register.southwestpca.org/southwestpca
For details on using the submission database and on the application process in general, please see the Proposal Submission FAQs and Tips page at http://southwestpca.org/conference/faqs-and-tips/
Individual proposals for 15-minute papers must include an abstract of approximately 200-500 words and a brief bio in the body of the proposal form.
For information on how to submit a proposal for a roundtable or a multi-paper panel, please view the above FAQs and Tips page.
The deadline for submissions is October 31, 2023.
SWPACA offers monetary awards for the best graduate student papers in a variety of categories. Submissions of accepted, full papers are due January 1, 2024. SWPACA also offers travel fellowships for undergraduate and graduate students. For more information, visit http://southwestpca.org/conference/graduate-student-awards/
Registration and travel information for the conference will be available at http://southwestpca.org/conference/conference-registration-information/ .
In addition, please check out the organization’s peer-reviewed, scholarly journal, Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, at http://journaldialogue.org/
If you have any questions about the Game Studies, Culture, Play & Practice Area, please contact jruggill@arizona.edu. If you have general questions about the conference, please contact support@southwestpca.org and a member of the executive team will get back to you.
This will be a fully in-person conference. If you’re looking for an online option to present your work, keep an eye out for details about the 2024 SWPACA Summer Salon, a completely virtual conference to take place in June 2024. However, do keep in mind that the Summer Salon is a smaller conference with limited presentation slots and no student funding assistance.