Steven Dashiell – a post-doctoral fellow at the AU Game Center – received the Best Paper Award for graduate students and early-career scholars from the American Men’s Studies Association Conference for the paper “Revisiting Epic Glory in Dagorhir – Bleed, Masculinity, and Identity in Larp.” The paper is an analysis of ethnographic interviews of participants in Dagorhir, a live-action role playing game that has chapters across the country. Via discourse analysis, the paper unearths characteristics of cultural capital among the players, and challenges past research specifically on this gaming phenomena.
DC Theatre Arts featured an article on Rorschach Theatre's current Psychogeographies project, Dissonant City (which highlights moments in DC music history), and the live immersive play that will be produced in July. Professor Kylos Brannon has been working on the various Psychogeographies Projects for 3 years and is producing/co-directing/designing projection for the video components to Angel Number Nine, opening on July 10th.
About the July show: "The project will soon go out with a bang with Angel Number Nine. After several months of boxes in the mail and exploring at one’s own pace, the story and audience will all converge on 1020 Connecticut Avenue NW to feel the music live and in person. Rorschach is taking on the significant task of converting a former retail space into a ’90s rock bar and highly immersive theatrical experience. With a bar for drinks, curated listening stations, vinyl for sale, and an exhibit highlighting DC’s musical history, this promises to be more than an average night at the theater."
Last Sunday, Wes Lowery delivered the featured commentary on CBS News Sunday Morning. He addressed the dangers of U.S. political figures capitalizing on the backlash (he called it “whitelash”) that has developed in the aftermath of a period of progressive advances.
Manuela Farinosi (University of Udine, Italy) and Filippo Trevisan presented a paper titled “Re-writing the disability narrative: Social media and (self)representation strategies for marginalized identities” at the annual conference of the Società Italiana di Sociologia, Cultura e Comunicazione (Italian Association for Cultural and Communication Sociology), which took place last week at the University of Bari, Italy.
Aram Sinnreich’s forthcoming sci-fi novel A Second Chance for Yesterday received a glowing review in Scientific American, which called it "a perceptive, mesmerizing time-travel tale of self-revelation and redemption.”
Aram was also interviewed by USA Today at the Supreme Court on Thursday, about their decision ending affirmative action.
John C. Watson delivered a talk titled: “Allowing Journalists to be Licensed Professionals” on June 26 at the Little Penn coffeehouse in Washington, D.C. It has part of the ongoing “Pints & Profs – Love to Learn” enterprise that brings academic lectures to bars and coffeehouse to enlighten adults who miss or missed college. Watson presented a paper on the topic several years ago at the annual conference of the Association for Practical and Applied Ethics.
Andrew Phelps, director of the AU Game Center, served on a panel discussion at the international Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) in Sevilla, Spain, entitled “Mis/Dis Information and Games Studies in Climate, Health, Culture, and News.” – with Mia Consalvo (Concordia University), Roger Altizer (Utah University), Lindsay Grace (University of Miami), and Harmut Koenitz (Södertörn University). (He managed not to melt in the Spanish summer, barely.)
