The GI Direct for November 14, 2024

What's Happening at the GI

Hard to believe our first GI Direct for month of November is coming out on the 14th! If you don't already follow us on Instagram, then consider giving us a follow so you can stay updated with some of the GI's more social aspects, including our recent Halloween Social! Our student members from Mexico have continued their tradition of constructing an altar for Día de los Muertos and have encouraged our members to bring photos of passed loved ones to honour their memory.

We've also been receiving some fantastic proposals for the 2025 International Conference on Games and Narrative (ICGaN'25) and we're still accepting submissions! Check out our call for proposals if you haven't already. And while you're there, consider becoming a reviewer! We're currently accepting expressions of interest from potential reviewers, so if that interests you, fill out the linked form.

Research Updates

• First Person Scholar (FPS), a middle-state publication supported and published by the Games Institute, has released its latest special issue titled “Gaming Paratexts.”

The GI Podcast

The GI Podcast is available on all major podcast platforms and features a wide variety of emerging and established scholars from diverse disciplines. Check out this episode featuring PhD candidate Joseph (Joe) Tu !

• 048: Adapting Player Experience with Joe Tu

Project Spotlight

For this week's project spotlight, we're spotlighting a project from Dr. Shana MacDonald

Dr. MacDonald and her team “Feminist Think Tank” are examining several archived collections of feminist media for a comparative analysis of feminist eras to map links between the varied and rich media practices of the time. They hope to combat flattened, anti-feminist tropes that often circulate in the on-going rewriting of feminist histories.

Using a data feminist framework, the project utilizes text and image analysis to (1) determine the prevalence of feminist keywords within a series of collections housed at the Internet Archives and (2) compare their frequency and usage across collections to (3) map which feminist terms are most repeated within web archival records of feminist movements in the last four decades.

The collections include historical scopes such as the Fales Library New York Feminist Art Institute and Guerilla Girls collection, the Sallie Bingham Center for women’s history and culture collection, the Tamiment-Wager-Feminism and Women’s Movements collection, and the Schlesigner Library’s #MeToo Web Archives collection.

Datasets are coded, organised, and visualised to determine overlaps in content, media, and form to un/recover intersectional, queer, trans, and Indigenous feminist media practices to better contextualise these practices within the digital present. Rather than defining how eras of feminist activism differ, the project aims to categorize the ways that these eras overlap in their trajectories and shared solidarities to explore how they inform each other over time.

Interesting fact: This project was the first time many of the co-researchers learned how to code!

Upcoming External Events

Check out the following UWaterloo events we've highlighted for our community.

1. The Practical Side of Interdisciplinary Research: The Ins and Outs of Building Teams Across Faculties [HYBRID] Friday, November 22, 2:00 - 3:30 pm. Join the panel to gain insights into strategies for developing and advancing research projects with interdisciplinary teams. Many GI members will be featured, and we encourage you to come and support!
2. Indigenous Speakers Series presents Greg Staats [IN-PERSON] Thursday, November 28, 1:30 pm - 2:45 pm. Join the discussion with Greg Staats as he will show selected images that identify key moments of movement over a 40-year career of exhibitions and sharing.
3. Hungry Feast Dish show [IN-PERSON] November 19 to November 23. Uwaterloo is putting on a play by Kwantlen First Nation writer Joseph Dandurand called Th’owxiya: The Hungry Feast Dish!

Research Opportunities

Get involved with some exciting research projects and opportunities we've highlighted for our community!

1. Dragen Lab is hiring a co-op student - Dragen Lab is hiring a co-op student for Winter 25 term, applications can be accessed through WaterlooWorks.
2. AI Metaphors Workshop in Toronto - AI Metaphors Workshop by UKAI projects featuring writing, arts, research in understanding AI through the creative use of metaphor.
3. CfP for Special Issue on Feminist Futuruties - Feminist Think Tank’s (Un)Disturbed: A Journal of Feminist Voices. Due on Dec 1, 2024, submit to [email protected]
4. Funding prospects from UWaterloo - The UW is providing internal and external postdoctoral funding opportunities. Programs are open to applications from scholars in any field or discipline, and are managed centrally through Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affair.
5. Georgia Tech University in Atlanta hiring for multiple tenure-track positions.
6. Indiana University Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering is hiring Assistant or Associate Tenure Professor in Informatics.
7. Simon Fraser University in B.C, Canada is hiring Tenure-track Faculty Positions: Assistant or Associate Professor.

Member Testimonial

“The Games Institute was instrumental in assisting to develop the scope of my project Digital Oral Histories for Reconciliation: The Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children History Education Initiative (DOHR) - a community-driven project with former residents, scholars, and stakeholders to co-design a grade 11 Canadian History curriculum that includes an oral history-based virtual reality experience. This project makes significant scholarly contributions for: a restorative approach to research; historical thinking for reconciliation; virtual reality education, trauma-informed oral history, and (...) conduct[ing] empirical research about [the curriculum’s] educational value. (...) The GI has provided critical pathways to partnerships to support this work, such as Dr. Oliver Schneider, whose work (...) [allowed us to explore] how haptics affects storytelling in museums.” - Dr. Kristina Llewellyn, Professor, McMaster University

Where to Find Us

Stay up to date with all our research updates by checking us out online!

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• Our Website

Join the GI!

Interested in becoming a part of the GI? Check out Prospective Members Page for more details!