Marc A. Ouellette
Old Dominion University, English, Faculty Member
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Semiotics, Critical Theory, Digital Humanities, Video Games, Material Practice, Cultural Analysis, and 21 moreCultural Studies, Digital Theory and Culture, Gender, Women's Studies, Film Theory and Practice, Counter Culture, TV, Urban Culture, Raewyn Connell, New Media, Popular Culture, Media and Cultural Studies, Visual Culture, Pedagogy, Digital Culture, Consumer Culture, Discourse, Politics, Consumerism, Frankfurt School, and Subjectivity (Identity Politics) edit
While Marshall McLuhan is often acknowledged as an influential theorist for Game Studies, there is very little work currently available that directly attempts to apply McLuhan’s theoretical framework and terminology. This article,... more
While Marshall McLuhan is often acknowledged as an influential theorist for Game Studies, there is very little work currently available that directly attempts to apply McLuhan’s theoretical framework and terminology. This article, therefore, provides an overview, interrogation and application of McLuhan’s taxonomy of Hot and Cool media to digital games. McLuhan describes Hot media as ‘high fidelity’ and ‘low participation’, while Cool media are conversely ‘high participation’ and ‘low fidelity’. The article summarizes McLuhan’s conceptual spectrum and articulates how these qualities can exist not only within digital games but also within the player: their skills, competencies and literacies. In doing so, we propose the further quality of ‘pattern’ to better describe how Hot and Cool features operate within game experiences. The article finally discusses how Hot and Cool game designs can impact user’s affective, cognitive, motoric and sociocultural responses to the play experience.
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... While Niko continually compares his new life to the hardships of being a soldier in his war-torn Eastern European homeland-particularly in poignant ... though bricolage comprises the bulk (if not all) of GTA IV's discursive... more
... While Niko continually compares his new life to the hardships of being a soldier in his war-torn Eastern European homeland-particularly in poignant ... though bricolage comprises the bulk (if not all) of GTA IV's discursive aesthetic, these pat and in-built responses wander quite a ...
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Comparative Literature, Ethics, Digital Humanities, Play, Popular Culture, and 15 moreDigital Media, Politics and Literature, Video Games and Learning, Countercultural Studies, Video Games, Gender, Resistance (Social), Postmodernism, Video Game Theory, Cultural power and resistance, Pakistani Literature in English and Urdu, South Asian Literature in English, Post Colonial Theory, Post Structuralist Theory, and Post Theory
""""The contemporary production of “style” relies heavily on the implementation of the “short-circuit sign” and the relationship of both to the emptiness of fourth-order... more
""""The contemporary production of “style” relies heavily on the implementation of the “short-circuit sign” and the relationship of both to the emptiness of fourth-order simulation and to the remediation of successive visual forms. In detailing the “short-circuit sign,” film scholar James Monaco highlights the important role of cultural codes in the naturalization and the reification of on-screen images so that signifier and signified become identical, or are perceived as such. It is the cultural codes, then, that distinguish this mode from the establishment of a sign’s iconicity, insofar as the “short-circuit sign” belongs, as it were, to the genre and also in terms of the privileging of the visual over other means of transmission. If, however, the “short-circuit sign” and its role in the production of verisimilitude exist in and through cultural codes, then the study of this form need not confine itself to the study of moving images exclusively. Yet, the intersection of the visual and the material in such signs remains largely unexplored. Similarly, while Bolter and Grusin’s Remediation updates several of McLuhan’s tenets to arrive at the ways in which visual media repurpose and retransmit other visual media, none of these have really been applied to investigate the particularized and individualized effects of viewing everything and everyone through remediated lenses. Moreover, it is a critical commonplace to suggest that Baudrillard consistently ignores the materiality of sign production. In these regards, then, style presents a unique blend of iconicity, short-circuits, prothesis, remediation and simulation that points to and problematizes the inevitable materiality of the human body as a site of and a surface for cultural production. """"
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Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Digital Humanities, Ethnography, Digital Media, and 15 moreGesture, Cultural Semiotics, Cultural Theory, Embodiment, Bakhtin, Machinima, Dialogism, Art and technology, Marshall McLuhan, Everyday Life, Hipsters, Cyborgs, Game Spaces, Bolter and Grusin, and Hipster Consumerism
... Crisis. These feature female protagonists in traditionally male roles. Female wrestlers such as Chyna and the recent film, Girl Fight, provide similar opportunities for cross-gender identification in the earlier cited genres. As well... more
... Crisis. These feature female protagonists in traditionally male roles. Female wrestlers such as Chyna and the recent film, Girl Fight, provide similar opportunities for cross-gender identification in the earlier cited genres. As well ...
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... Crisis. These feature female protagonists in traditionally male roles. Female wrestlers such as Chyna and the recent film, Girl Fight, provide similar opportunities for cross-gender identification in the earlier cited genres. As well... more
... Crisis. These feature female protagonists in traditionally male roles. Female wrestlers such as Chyna and the recent film, Girl Fight, provide similar opportunities for cross-gender identification in the earlier cited genres. As well ...
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Combination photo-essay and cultural studies paper examining the relationships among individuality, branding, creativity and the creation of a discourse via strategies of littering peculiar to Canada.
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Although it is a popular topic for courses inflected with critical pedagogy, “invisibility” remains undefined and instead serves as an umbrella term for a series of disparate processes. In this regard, the semiotic components of the term,... more
Although it is a popular topic for courses inflected with critical pedagogy, “invisibility” remains undefined and instead serves as an umbrella term for a series of disparate processes. In this regard, the semiotic components of the term, including the status of the sign and the related processes of discursive regimes, ex-nomination, and interpellation, among others, help to locate the concept and to establish its analytical purchase. The polysemy in pedagogy and in scholarly literature limits the potential of a critical device that might be useful, not only in teacher education but also in teaching practice as well. Ultimately, a semiotic analysis of the courses and the readings reveal that “invisibility” offers a means of understanding the naturalized discourses and relations of power, the operation of normalized structural barriers that impede the success and the access of minority groups, and the often obfuscated biases produced by the combination of the two. Thus, this chapter situates the primary usages of “invisibility” within an available critical vocabulary grounded in semiotics while elucidating the connections between the two. At the same time, it is important to consider the sources and the effects of each group's occasional confusion by examining representative instances in light of the semiotic vocabulary that spans the divide between the content and the cohort. In this way, the opportunities lost during these particular offerings of the courses might serve to enhance future iterations.
Research Interests:
Critical Theory, Semiotics, Cultural Studies, Information Science, Teacher Education, and 11 moreCritical Pedagogy, Cultural Semiotics, Cultural Theory, Gilles Deleuze, Pedagogy, Teacher Training, Semiotics Of Culture, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Social Semiotics, Reflective Teaching, and Visibility/invisibility
Sexuality Studies Series Becki Ross, General Editor This series focuses on original, provocative, scholarly research examining from a range of perspectives the complexity of human sexual practice, identity, community, and desire. Books in... more
Sexuality Studies Series Becki Ross, General Editor This series focuses on original, provocative, scholarly research examining from a range of perspectives the complexity of human sexual practice, identity, community, and desire. Books in the series explore how sexual- ...
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... Crisis. These feature female protagonists in traditionally male roles. Female wrestlers such as Chyna and the recent film, Girl Fight, provide similar opportunities for cross-gender identification in the earlier cited genres. As well... more
... Crisis. These feature female protagonists in traditionally male roles. Female wrestlers such as Chyna and the recent film, Girl Fight, provide similar opportunities for cross-gender identification in the earlier cited genres. As well ...
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In this article we theorize the incommensurability of game studies as symptomatic of its immaturity as a discipline and, quite frankly, we've had enough of it. In short, none of us can agree on the rulebook for Game Studies. This is not... more
In this article we theorize the incommensurability of game studies as symptomatic of its immaturity as a discipline and, quite frankly, we've had enough of it. In short, none of us can agree on the rulebook for Game Studies. This is not uncommon when a new discipline emerges; indeed, it’s the rite of passage as scholars work out the goals of the field, suitable tools for the job, and objects of study. The discipline needs a period of rigorous reflection and criticism so that its metaphysical boundaries inexorably emerge: principle goals are agreed upon, the tools have been tested, acknowledged as useful or discarded, and the multitude of objects have proved amenable or impervious. Simply put, tell us what the rules are and we'll play.
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This paper details the adaptation of metagame features in the hybrid classroom in order to foster metacognition. In the process, it challenges the determinism that games must be competitive to be fun and its complement, that fun games are... more
This paper details the adaptation of metagame features in the hybrid classroom in order to foster metacognition. In the process, it challenges the determinism that games must be competitive to be fun and its complement, that fun games are competitive.
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Resident Evil 7, in articulating the threat of infectious mold, situates the illness with the feminine: Historical, cultural, and physiological connections between mold and women gives the game license to limit, objectify, and render the... more
Resident Evil 7, in articulating the threat of infectious mold, situates the illness with the feminine: Historical, cultural, and physiological connections between mold and women gives the game license to limit, objectify, and render the female characters monstrous. First-person immersion brings us into contact with the infection, as mold and Molded threaten the buildings of the Bakers, while mold growing in their brains threatens the Bakers themselves. Through the form of infection, the disease is invasively feminine, reflected in the Bakers and their homes.
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As much as we have wanted games to offer human behaviours, perception, especially with respect to emotions and affective intentionality, has taken a backseat in the extant models. As phenomenology makes clear, the emphasis on behaviour... more
As much as we have wanted games to offer human behaviours, perception, especially with respect to emotions and affective intentionality, has taken a backseat in the extant models.
As phenomenology makes clear, the emphasis on behaviour over perception leaves out the crucial, indeed foundational mode of intelligence: affective intentionality. Simply put, how we feel about phenomena impacts how we perceive phenomena as significant, inconsequential, interesting, etc. Thus, we should be asking if machines
can even comprehend significance: Can they feel any particular way about a game, a move, or the phenomenon of play? Indeed, put plainly, is the phenomenon of play even an ontological possibility for the Instruction Set Architectures (ISA) of computers?
As phenomenology makes clear, the emphasis on behaviour over perception leaves out the crucial, indeed foundational mode of intelligence: affective intentionality. Simply put, how we feel about phenomena impacts how we perceive phenomena as significant, inconsequential, interesting, etc. Thus, we should be asking if machines
can even comprehend significance: Can they feel any particular way about a game, a move, or the phenomenon of play? Indeed, put plainly, is the phenomenon of play even an ontological possibility for the Instruction Set Architectures (ISA) of computers?
Research Interests:
Perception, Virtual Reality (Computer Graphics), Video Games and Learning, Phenomenology, Video Games, and 8 moreVideo Game Design, Video Game Development and Production, Gameplay (Video Game Design), Video Game Theory, Perception and Cognition, Artifical Intelligence, Computer Games, and affective intentionality
This chapter rethinks the unreliable narrator in Ford Madox Ford's novel by examining the portrayal of the Oedipus/Laius complex.
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This paper looks at the ways video games erase women in and through play.
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The abstract is published online only. If you did not include a short abstract for the online version when you submitted the manuscript, the first paragraph or the first 10 lines of the chapter will be displayed here. If possible, please... more
The abstract is published online only. If you did not include a short abstract for the online version when you submitted the manuscript, the first paragraph or the first 10 lines of the chapter will be displayed here. If possible, please provide us with an informative abstract. Hockey video games highlight the ways in which the video game medium shapes and conditions the experience of producing and/or performing the sport "in real life." Indeed, the accumulation of advanced statistics in and through the constant evaluation, measurement, and surveillance which are inherent to video games-and increasingly seen as foundational for sport-reveals important contradictions not only in the way the embodied sport is played and understood, but also in terms of the proofs of masculinity upon which the sport is built. It then becomes clear that the building of masculinity and the empowerment of the character become one and the same. The ludic function reinforces the cultural imperative and vice versa. Thus, our chapter prizes apart the conflation of masculinity with hockey while showing the ways that video game studies can contribute to existing disciplines.
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Pascal just turned six. His sister, Jocelyne, is eight. Pascal likes loaders, planes, diggers, garbage trucks, tractors, dump trucks, and trains and skates fearlessly. Jocelyne likes all things pink and purple, Barbies, her Playmobil... more
Pascal just turned six. His sister, Jocelyne, is eight. Pascal likes loaders, planes, diggers, garbage trucks, tractors, dump trucks, and trains and skates fearlessly. Jocelyne likes all things pink and purple, Barbies, her Playmobil dollhouse/mansion, princess tiaras, frilly dresses, unicorns, and all things small and fluffy, like kittens; she is sometimes afraid of falling and hitting the ice, which impedes her skating progress. Yet, they both love run hugs, squeeze hugs, and jump hugs. The first involves running at top speed and jumping feet first between daddy's legs and being caught midair, at least until Jocelyne got too big for it. Since then, the after school ritual starts with a sprint, a leap into the air, a catch, and a hug. Jump hugs involve leaping from the stairs, the van, the dock, anywhere with height. All of these can turn into squeeze hugs-gripping as hard as possible; sometimes hard enough that they hang from me as though on a chin-up bar-or even tackle hugs, which are what they sound like. Moreover, Pascal and Jocelyne are as likely to end a Saturday night pillow fight by having a princess tea party, or vice versa. In fact, we have made sheet change part of this last "terdition," as the kids say. 1 There is no better way to remove or stuff a pillow case than jumping on the bed. Making a massive jump pile is the best way to change the linens. I mention all this not because we imagine that it is in any way an ideal or a model approach to anything or to show how cool we are (my wife, Michelle, and I are over forty-five, with kids under ten: by definition, we can't be cool) or any of the obvious issues of discipline, energy control, etc. This is all about care, especially instilling an ethic of care in Pascal and with it a sense of self-in-relation, all of it. We play with care and we care about play (see Figure 1). Figure 1: Playing XBox Kinect, with Pascal and me as a single player. Moreover, each of these derives at least in part from having a father whose academic specialties include gender, sex, sexuality, especially as these appear in video games and play. My research focuses on the way the algorithmic kernel of the games maps onto cultural processes-including the development of masculinity-in and through play. Adaptation, in its many forms-as a learning strategy, as a pedagogical strategy, as a means of coping to changing demands, etc.-figures heavily in my chosen disciplines. Players need to adapt to the game, to each level or task, just as parents need to adapt to a child's learning and capabilities. The best kinds of games are insistent and make you want to play. Parenting is insistent from the get-go, but where a game insists on collecting, building and discovering every last object, path or solution, parenting insists that you don't miss any. Simply put, I was always going to care about gender roles and play and how one maps onto the other. Every semester, I ask my students which toys and games include aspects of teaching as a part of playing. This is a trick question because the answer is as simple as it is expansive: all of them. Here, I take my cue from one of the earliest studies of games, noted film and TV scholar Marsha Kinder's look at the adaptation(s) of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to a video game and toys. In considering the Oedipal dynamic created by an intertextual web, Kinder seemingly anticipates film scholar Robert Stam's assertion, "Adaptation Studies itself has to 'adapt'" to include new/digital media (Stam). Taken together, then, these insights point to the fact that meaning-making is an ongoing process and that no text is self-contained. As literature and digital media scholar Simone Murray asks quite rhetorically, "is not adaptation the lingua franca of the twenty-first-century humanities (and to some extent the social sciences also)?" (Murray). My academic
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This article details a project that involved collecting the necessary items to produce a set of wedding pictures. While photographs have long been understood as indexical signs, the process of collecting the items via trips to thrift... more
This article details a project that involved collecting the necessary items to produce a set of wedding pictures. While photographs have long been understood as indexical signs, the process of collecting the items via trips to thrift stores reveals a host of additional indexical signs through the set of underlying contextual cultural constraints surrounding the difference between the rituals of the marriage rite and the wedding as a public, performative practice. Indeed, the second hand items leave indexical and material traces of the excess and the disposability of weddings, while the pictures offer the material connection to the ostentation of the event. Ultimately, the pictures and the disposability of the host of single-use items reveal weddings as a kind of packaging, to be discarded after use. Even so, for the witnesses of the event, the pictures offer a material attachment that is sustained in and through their indexicality. Michelle and I have been married twice, but we never had a wedding. It's not us. It wasn't convenient. We couldn't afford it. It didn't make sense in terms of our families. We had a civil ceremony with a pinch-hitting Presbyterian-we weren't aware of stunt doubles for city hall recitations-and we repeated the vows with a priest. Still, we never had a wedding, at least not according to the rules. Whereas the actual performance of the marriage as a ritually effective, performative act (Austin 1962, Tambiah 1985) requires only around five people, the couple, the witnesses and the celebrant, along Semiotic Review
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A study of the Victoria's Secret catalogues, which frames the period 1996-2006, reveals that the models' poses and postures manipulate the formulaic gaze of objectification with seemingly empowering themes. Instead of the indeterminate,... more
A study of the Victoria's Secret catalogues, which frames the period 1996-2006, reveals that the models' poses and postures manipulate the formulaic gaze of objectification with seemingly empowering themes. Instead of the indeterminate, averted looks that Berger (1972) and Mulvey (1989) considered in their analyses, the more recent versions of Victoria's Secret photographs confront viewers with pouts, glares, and stares of defiance. In this essay, I contribute to current conversations regarding mixed messages that concern post-feminism and third-wave feminism (Duffy, Hancock, & Tyler, 2017; Glapka, 2017; McAllister & DeCarvalho, 2014; McRobbie, 2009). In this regard, the Victoria's Secret catalogues constitute an important artifact of the turn of the 21 st century decade, one which saw the rise of so-called "raunch culture" and increasing depictions of hyperfemininity and hypersexuality in popular and celebrity culture (Donnelly
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This paper goes beyond the determinism that only serious games can teach to explore the ways games produce meta-cognition in a variety of ways. Thus, it provides a design heuristic for game designers. The Incredible Machine, then, serves... more
This paper goes beyond the determinism that only serious games can teach to explore the ways games produce meta-cognition in a variety of ways. Thus, it provides a design heuristic for game designers. The Incredible Machine, then, serves as a model for this process.
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Whilst Marshall McLuhan is often acknowledged as an influential theorist for Game Studies, there is very little work currently available that directly attempts to apply McLuhan's theoretical framework and terminology. This article... more
Whilst Marshall McLuhan is often acknowledged as an influential theorist for Game Studies, there is very little work currently available that directly attempts to apply McLuhan's theoretical framework and terminology. This article therefore provides an overview, interrogation and application of McLuhan's taxonomy of Hot and Cool media to digital games. McLuhan describes Hot media as 'high fidelity' and 'low participation', whilst Cool media are conversely 'high participation' and 'low fidelity'. The article summarises McLuhan's conceptual spectrum, and articulates how these qualities can exist not only within digital games, but also within the player: their skills, competencies and literacies. In doing so we propose the further quality of 'pattern' to better describe how Hot and Cool features operate within game experiences. The article finally discusses how Hot and Cool game designs can impact user's affective, cognitive, motoric and socio-cultural responses to the play experience. https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/convergence Convergence
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This chapter explores the ways in which the field of Game Studies helps shape popular understandings of player, play, and game, and specifically how the field alters the conceptual, linguistic, and discursive apparatuses that gamers use... more
This chapter explores the ways in which the field of Game Studies helps shape popular understandings
of player, play, and game, and specifically how the field alters the conceptual, linguistic, and discursive
apparatuses that gamers use to contextualize, describe, and make sense of their experiences. The chapter
deploys the concept of apportioned commodity fetishism to analyze the phenomena of discourse as
practice, persona, the vagaries of game design, recursion, lexical formation, institutionalization, systems
of self-effectiveness, theory as anti-theory, and commodification.
of player, play, and game, and specifically how the field alters the conceptual, linguistic, and discursive
apparatuses that gamers use to contextualize, describe, and make sense of their experiences. The chapter
deploys the concept of apportioned commodity fetishism to analyze the phenomena of discourse as
practice, persona, the vagaries of game design, recursion, lexical formation, institutionalization, systems
of self-effectiveness, theory as anti-theory, and commodification.
Research Interests:
This chapter explores the ways in which the field of Game Studies helps shape popular understandings of player, play, and game, and specifically how the field alters the conceptual, linguistic, and discursive apparatuses that gamers use... more
This chapter explores the ways in which the field of Game Studies helps shape popular understandings of player, play, and game, and specifically how the field alters the conceptual, linguistic, and discursive apparatuses that gamers use to contextualize, describe, and make sense of their experience. The chapter deploys the concpet of apportioned commodity fetishism to analyze the phenomena of discourse as practice, persona, the vagaries of game design, recursion, lexical formation, institutionalization, systems of self-effectiveness, theory as anti-theory, and commodification.
Research Interests:
This paper traces the relationship between the shifting representations of masculinity in professional wrestling programs of the 1990s and the contemporaneous shifts in conceptions of masculinity, examining the ways each of these shifts... more
This paper traces the relationship between the shifting representations of masculinity in professional wrestling programs of the 1990s and the contemporaneous shifts in conceptions of masculinity, examining the ways each of these shifts impacted the other. Most important among these was a growing sense that the biggest enemy in wrestling and in day-to-day life is one’s boss. Moreover, the corporate corruption theme continues to underscore the WWE’s on-screen and off-screen coverage, well into the second decade of the twenty-first century. Thus, the paper provides a template for considering a widely consumed popular cultural form in ways that challenge the determinism of sex, violence and fakery.
Research Interests:
Gender Studies, Media Studies, Popular Culture, Masculinity Studies, Gender, and 12 moreMasculinity, Masculinities, Consumer Culture, Studies On Men And Masculinity, Constructions of masculinity, Masculinity and Gender Studies, TV studies, Wrestling, Hegemonic Masculinity, Professional Wrestling, TV Series, and 1990s American Pop Culture
Although it is a popular topic for courses inflected with critical pedagogy, “invisibility” remains undefined and instead serves as an umbrella term for a series of disparate processes. In this regard, the semiotic components of the term,... more
Although it is a popular topic for courses inflected with critical pedagogy, “invisibility” remains undefined and instead serves as an umbrella term for a series of disparate processes. In this regard, the semiotic components of the term, including the status of the sign and the related processes of discursive regimes, ex-nomination, and interpellation, among others, help to locate the concept and to establish its analytical purchase. The polysemy in pedagogy and in scholarly literature limits the potential of a critical device that might be useful, not only in teacher education but also in teaching practice as well. Ultimately, a semiotic analysis of the courses and the readings reveal that “invisibility” offers a means of understanding the naturalized discourses and relations of power, the operation of normalized structural barriers that impede the success and the access of minority groups, and the often obfuscated biases produced by the combination of the two. Thus, this chapter situates the primary usages of “invisibility” within an available critical vocabulary grounded in semiotics while elucidating the connections between the two. At the same time, it is important to consider the sources and the effects of each group's occasional confusion by examining representative instances in light of the semiotic vocabulary that spans the divide between the content and the cohort. In this way, the opportunities lost during these particular offerings of the courses might serve to enhance future iterations.
Research Interests:
Critical Theory, Semiotics, Cultural Studies, Information Science, Teacher Education, and 11 moreCritical Pedagogy, Cultural Semiotics, Cultural Theory, Gilles Deleuze, Pedagogy, Teacher Training, Semiotics Of Culture, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Social Semiotics, Reflective Teaching, and Visibility/invisibility
We argue that Portal offers an opportunity to revisit Schiller's three drives in an environment based on instructional scaffolding via the implementation of the programmer's algorithm. Thus, Portal constitutes first and foremost a game... more
We argue that Portal offers an opportunity to revisit Schiller's three drives in an environment based on instructional scaffolding via the implementation of the programmer's algorithm. Thus, Portal constitutes first and foremost a game about games.
Research Interests:
Cultural Studies, Aesthetics, Media and Cultural Studies, Digital Humanities, Play, and 16 moreDigital Media, Cultural Theory, Video Games and Learning, Video Games, Video Game Design, Video Game Development and Production, Video Game Programming, Gameplay (Video Game Design), Digital Culture, Pedagogy, Video Game, Video Game Theory, Friedrich Schiller, Emotion in Video Games, Scaffolding, and Continental Philosophy and Aesthetics
From the editors' introduction: "Ouellette examines both games studies and professional and technical communication, offering a critique through the lenses of gender studies and queer theory in 'Come Out Playing: Computer Games and the... more
From the editors' introduction: "Ouellette examines both games studies and professional and technical communication, offering a critique through the lenses of gender studies and queer theory in 'Come Out Playing: Computer Games and the Discursive Practices of Gender, Sex, and Sexuality.' In examining play as part of the professional institution of computer games, Ouellette notes that the absence of GLBTQ subjectivities speaks to a weakness in both technical communication and games. Indeed, he writes succinctly: 'The exclusion, or relegation, of the very topic of gender, sex, and sexuality itself reveals much about the phenomenon' (p. 41). Thus, he sees an opportunity to play with identity and to see through the often nominalizing discourse surrounding technique and technology."
Research Interests:
Discourse Analysis, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Media Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, and 19 moreCritical Discourse Studies, Sex and Gender, Digital Media, Queer Theory, Video Games and Learning, Gender and Sexuality, Gay And Lesbian Studies, Video Games, Gender, Technical Communication, Critical Discourse Analysis, Video Game Theory, Digital Games, Computer Games Education, Computer Games, LGBTQ studies, Queer Reading, Gender and Digital Gaming, and Alex Doty
This paper began as a presentation at the SW/TX PCA/ACA & PCA/ACA conference in San Antonio, in 2011. It hopes to position modes of reading gender in games other than those prescribed and proscribed by the games themselves to show that... more
This paper began as a presentation at the SW/TX PCA/ACA & PCA/ACA conference in San Antonio, in 2011. It hopes to position modes of reading gender in games other than those prescribed and proscribed by the games themselves to show that GLBTQ characters, themes, concerns, issues, etc. are far more available--and should be--within game spaces than otherwise advertised or presupposed.
Research Interests:
Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Game Theory, Game studies, Media and Cultural Studies, and 17 moreDigital Humanities, Digital Media, Game Design, Video Games and Learning, Gender and Sexuality, Gay And Lesbian Studies, Video Games, Video Game Design, Digital Culture, Digital Media & Learning, Gender Discourse, Video Game Theory, Theories of Gender and Transgender, Digital Theory and Culture, Slash Fanfiction, Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Studies, and Alex Doty
In a home with two children under six, managing to find the time and the games that allow for play with a partner who has completely different tastes and capabilities produces compromises both inside and outside the game, as well as a... more
In a home with two children under six, managing to find the time and the games that allow for play with a partner who has completely different tastes and capabilities produces compromises both inside and outside the game, as well as a hybrid form that spans the two. This is important because the continuous and continual compromises reveal the ways in which such decisions become an integral part of the gaming process. Thus, our paper will document each of the three principal motives for compromise and the levels on which these register, along with the variety of games—racing, arcade, FPS, action, puzzle-solving, social, etc.—for which this happens. In fact, the variety of games is widespread and varying that we have the corollary of showing that compromise really is inseparable from play.
Research Interests:
Collective Behavior, Cultural Studies, Game Theory, Game studies, Media Studies, and 15 moreNew Media, Digital Humanities, Play, Digital Media, Self-Organization, Video Games, Digital Culture, Complex Systems, Digital Media & Learning, Pedagogy, Video Game Theory, Social Evolution, Cooperation, Compromise, and Psychology of Video Games
he short circuit sign is one in which the signifier (the part carrying the message) and the signified (the meaning of the message) are the same. In a stop sign, that's not such a bad thing. However, I've noticed that contemporary style... more
he short circuit sign is one in which the signifier (the part carrying the message) and the signified (the meaning of the message) are the same. In a stop sign, that's not such a bad thing. However, I've noticed that contemporary style leads to people presenting themselves via short-circuit signs and this occurs for fear of being "read," or interpreted, in unintended ways. In other words, style is about controlling the message, with the self as the medium of that message. The cognitive and affective response, though, is one of "auto amputation," in which aspects of self, identity, and experience are willingly given up by those deploying certain styles. My favourite is still the smartphone user who gives up the use of a hand (and sometimes an entire arm) instead of putting the thing in a pocket. Good luck watching your kids like that! There are more. Have a look. This is hopefully going to be a bit of a bigger project.
Research Interests:
Critical Theory, Semiotics, Cultural Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Popular Culture, and 13 moreCultural Semiotics, Cultural Theory, Visual Semiotics, Social Media, Taste and Social Mobility, Marshall McLuhan, Social Semiotics, Style, Hipsters, Simulation & Simulacra, Marshall McLuhan: Understanding Media. The Extensions of Man, Bolter and Grusin, and Hipster Consumerism
The reliability of John Dowell as a narrator in Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier has been variously discussed; however, this essay examines the reliability of John Dowell with respect to his Oedipal motivations. The fact that Freud... more
The reliability of John Dowell as a narrator in Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier has been variously discussed; however, this essay examines the reliability of John Dowell with respect to his Oedipal motivations. The fact that Freud mostly ignored the fantasies that parents direct toward their children could be one explanation for the growing interest in recent pscyhoanalytic research. The essay addresses the social commentary in the novel through the Freudian paradigm rather than the relationships among the characters in it.
Research Interests:
The Novel, Narrative, Narrative and interpretation, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Narrative Methods, and 13 moreModernity, Masochism, Psychoanalysis And Literature, Modernism, Novel, 20th Century British Literature, Ford Madox Ford, Kaja Silverman, Oedipus Complex Concept, Unreliable Narrator, The Good Soldier, Literary Masochism, and Freudian Psychoanalysis
The first part of the title of this paper refers to a comment Lord Mark makes to Milly Theale, the heroine of Henry James’ novel, The Wings of the Dove. Lord Mark’s remark aptly summarizes one of the central themes of the story: exchange.... more
The first part of the title of this paper refers to a comment Lord Mark makes to Milly Theale, the heroine of Henry James’ novel, The Wings of the Dove. Lord Mark’s remark aptly summarizes one of the central themes of the story: exchange. Rather than purely economic transactions, exchanges occur within the context of (personal) relationships. Nobody performs a good deed without the expectation of receiving a benefit. The characters act out of self-interest instead of mutual friendship. The notable exception is Milly, who willingly shares her fortune and herself. Although Milly knows that exchange predominates among her acquaintances as a method of establishing and of maintaining relationships—indeed, as relationships—she refuses to behave similarly. Her refusal to join in this tactic becomes a powerful form of resistance. Ultimately, the mercenary tendencies of Merton Densher yield to the unselfishness he sees in Milly. This lesson prevents the pairing of Kate and Densher from succeeding.
Research Interests:
American Literature, Organizational Behavior, Social Psychology, Comparative Literature, The Novel, and 17 moreGender, Critical Social Psychology, Literature & Psychology, 19th-Century American Literature, Henry James, Industrial Psychology, Embeddedness, Person Organization Fit, Wings of the Dove, American Literature (Henry James), Heroes and heroines in literature, SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS, Perceived Justice, Leader member Exchange, Psychological Contracts, Person Job Fit, and The Wings of the Dove
Machinima, the practice of adapting recorded video game play into short films, highlights an often unacknowledged but significant shift in the consumption of video games and represents a key and underexplored intersection between the two... more
Machinima, the practice of adapting recorded video game play into short films, highlights an often unacknowledged but significant shift in the consumption of video games and represents a key and underexplored intersection between the two leading theoretical camps. Considering the landmark series Red vs. Blue through the lens of Bolter and Grusin’s propositions about “new” media’s relationships with other forms offers an entry point for theorizing not only machinima but also the intersections between the ludology and narratology positions in games studies.
Research Interests:
Cultural Studies, Communication, Media Studies, New Media, Journalism, and 17 moreDigital Humanities, Digital Literacy, Development communication, Video Games and Learning, Video Games, Media Education, Digital Culture, Machinima, Media Literacy, Media, Fan Cultures, Fan Theory and Culture, Digital Theory and Culture, Media Research, Social Communication, Media Impact and Effects and Usages, and Alternate Media
The "friend" missions in GTA4, along with several missions requiring the avatar to support and befriend LGBT non-playable characters, build on the requirement to start and to maintain relationships that was a feature in GTA: San Andreas.... more
The "friend" missions in GTA4, along with several missions requiring the avatar to support and befriend LGBT non-playable characters, build on the requirement to start and to maintain relationships that was a feature in GTA: San Andreas. However, in the more recent games, the majority of the relationships involve male characters going out on what amount to dates. In the process, the avatar and his friends enact covert and not-so covert intimacy and implicate the player in the development of the relationship. As such, players are given an incredible opportunity to explore, practice, rehearse and "play" at homosocial bonding as well as supporting the LGBT non-playable characters. Indeed, players are rewarded for their support by the games' scoring algorithms. Given the games' overwhelming popularity with audiences, they represent a tremendously powerful development, one which scholars should not overlook.
Research Interests:
History, Cultural Studies, Psychology, Social Psychology, Music, and 49 moreGame studies, New Media, Media and Cultural Studies, Play, Corporate Communication, Narrative, Popular Culture, Digital Media, Gesture, Multimedia, Poetry, Gay And Lesbian Studies, Embodiment, Critical Psychology, Video Games, Discourse, Politics, Narrative and Design, Digital Culture, Bakhtin, Sound, Machinima, Performance, Reading, Consumer Behavior, Video Game Theory, Masculinities, Sexual Identity, Dialogism, Art and technology, Virtual Worlds, Homosexuality, Advertisement, Queer, Gay, Lesbian, Script, Cyborgs, Lgbtq, Bisexual, Game Spaces, Grand Theft Auto 4. Literacy, Lyotard, Media and Culture, Consumption Culture, Sociology of Journalism, Spatial Story Telling, News Analysis, News ethics, and Public Policy
"Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar North 2008) continues the franchise's seeming secondary function of providing an ongoing critique of U.S. foreign and domestic habits and policies. Indeed, with its collection of readily recognizable... more
"Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar North 2008) continues the franchise's seeming
secondary function of providing an ongoing critique of U.S. foreign and domestic habits and policies. Indeed, with its collection of readily recognizable repurposed icons, Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA IV) elevates its satirical attack on the “post-9/11” sensibilities of the U.S. to roughly equal status with the actual game play. However, in its critique of the contradictory nature of these sensibilities, the game’s satire is equally contradictory. Thus, while the game is fun and frequently funny, the point of the textual play is often overwhelmed by a reliance on reinscribed icons and reversions to ribaldry."
secondary function of providing an ongoing critique of U.S. foreign and domestic habits and policies. Indeed, with its collection of readily recognizable repurposed icons, Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA IV) elevates its satirical attack on the “post-9/11” sensibilities of the U.S. to roughly equal status with the actual game play. However, in its critique of the contradictory nature of these sensibilities, the game’s satire is equally contradictory. Thus, while the game is fun and frequently funny, the point of the textual play is often overwhelmed by a reliance on reinscribed icons and reversions to ribaldry."
Research Interests:
Comparative Literature, Ethics, Digital Humanities, Play, Popular Culture, and 17 moreDigital Media, Politics and Literature, Video Games and Learning, Countercultural Studies, Video Games, Gender, Resistance (Social), Postmodernism, Video Game Theory, Cultural power and resistance, Post-Colonial Theory, Pakistani Literature in English and Urdu, Post-9/11 discourse and cultural production, Post 9/11 literature, South Asian Literature in English, Post Structuralist Theory, and Post 9/11 Theory
This project stems from two intersecting strands. The statement, "I can always find out," neatly summarizes the intersection. Not surprisingly, it has two distinct but simultaneous meanings. The first, in which "always" means "every... more
This project stems from two intersecting strands. The statement, "I can always find out," neatly summarizes the intersection. Not surprisingly, it has two distinct but simultaneous meanings. The first, in which "always" means "every time," considers the ways in which the ability to find knowledge has become synonymous with expertise and examines the elements that have fostered this situation. In this regard, factors such as the range of software and hardware--from Wikipedia and FAQs to cellphones and Ipods--which anticipate or "think" for the user but also require constant updating are both rationale and outcome for their youthful consumers. When combined with the downloading and broadening of elementary and secondary curriculum at an ever-increasing rate, the range of everyday devices which involve "looking up" information the results in technocrats whose expertise is searching. Thus, the second version, in which "always" means the lexical case, "as a last resort." This produces an atmosphere in which the reaction to new material occurs in the following rapid progression: the assumption "I can always find out" becomes the conclusion "I don't need to know because I can find out if I must" and in turn, the resignation of "I don't need to know."
Research Interests:
Cultural Studies, Computer Science, Information Technology, Education, New Media, and 17 moreDigital Humanities, E-learning, Expertise, Data Mining, Digital Media, Constructivism, Learning and Teaching, Digital Media & Learning, Pedagogy, Young People and The Internet, E-learning 2.0, The Internet, LMS, PLE, Computers, Expertise Development, and Connectivism
The popular portrayal of male children who have been sexually abused depicts them as inevitably growing to be abusers themselves, and this may have more to do with maintaining the cultural taboos both against male victimization and... more
The popular portrayal of male children who have been sexually abused depicts them as inevitably growing to be abusers themselves, and this may have more to do with maintaining the cultural taboos both against male victimization and against males having sex with males than with elucidating the experiences of the children. Ultimately, the dominant popular discourse is not so much for males who have been sexually abused as it is about them. Thus, the stories that are told have little to do with the individual in question—call him a “victim,” a “survivor,” etc.—and everything to do with the rest of the audience; the stories serve to dissociate audiences from those who have been abused.
Research Interests:
Discourse Analysis, Gender Studies, Feminist Theory, Literature, Child abuse and neglect, and 12 morePopular Culture, Masculinity Studies, Queer Theory, Sexuality, Sexual Violence, Gender and Sexuality, Masculinity, Critical Discourse Analysis, Media, Studies On Men And Masculinity, Poststructuralist Theory, and Film
This paper examines the ways in which post-9/11 video games become part of the larger intertextual network some have called the military entertainment complex. More specifically, I cite the Medal of Honor and Syphon Filter series as being... more
This paper examines the ways in which post-9/11 video games become part of the larger intertextual network some have called the military entertainment complex. More specifically, I cite the Medal of Honor and Syphon Filter series as being among those that not only bear traces of post-9/11 politics, but also play a part in producing and reproducing history by re-enacting American involvement in earlier wars via allegories of the war on terror. Significantly, American defeats somehow become recast as victories in which players participate. In this way, the games become part of the pedagogy in the "why we fight" way of portraying history.
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This essay stems from two cultural strands, which intersect in one cultural form, the sports film. The first of these is the figure of the "star," as opposed to hero, who is interested only in self-promotion. The second strand, masculine... more
This essay stems from two cultural strands, which intersect in one cultural form, the sports film. The first of these is the figure of the "star," as opposed to hero, who is interested only in self-promotion. The second strand, masculine nurturing, provides a direct counterpoint to the first. Sociologist Robert Connell explains that "In historically recent times, sport has come to be the leading definer of masculinity in mass culture" (54). In North America, sport plays an important and increasing role in our culture. Each of the four major sports leagues added teams in the last decade of the last century after little or no growth in the 1980s. [1] Coverage of sports at all levels has also increased through the addition of all-sports television networks and even a few, such as Speedvision and The Golf Channel, that are dedicated to a specific variety of sport. Only a very select few become elite athletes: the rest can compete at much lower levels, fantasize, or participate vicariously. Thus, sports films help to compensate for the disparity between those who cannot be and those who are professional athletes by contributing to the fantasies of the former group. By translating athletics to a cinematic venue, the film maker is better able to foster an identification between the characters and the viewers by placing the protagonists in situations that cannot be viewed in a regular sporting event.
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Combination photo-essay and cultural studies paper examining the relationships among individuality, branding, creativity and the creation of a discourse via strategies of littering peculiar to Canada.
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The development of the character of Det. Andy Sipowicz, on the ABC drama, NYPD: Blue, effectively demonstrates that the obstinance of traditional forms of masculinity may ultimately be a key factor in their undoing. Rather than effecting... more
The development of the character of Det. Andy Sipowicz, on the ABC drama, NYPD: Blue, effectively demonstrates that the obstinance of traditional forms of masculinity may ultimately be a key factor in their undoing. Rather than effecting a superficial change based on consumer choice, as concurrent characters do, Sipowicz undergoes a transformation of his social behavior. Given the choice of either adapting to change or losing his place on the police force—that is, his place within the hierarchy of (hegemonic) masculinities—Sipowicz will always adapt. This is significant because the prevailng scholarly sentiment holds that hegemonic masculinity is an impediment to change rather than a process to be manipulated. Moreover, Sipowicz' progression reflects a version of masculinity I have termed "mundane asculinity," one which comprises the everyday practices of men who belong to neither a marginalized nor a dominant masculine formation although their tendency might be to behave in a manner consistent with hegemonic masculinity, or the preferred formation in a given social setting. In other words, in keeping with the definition of hegemonic masculinity as site specific, those occupying the mundane position essentially “know their role” in the masculine hierarchy. provides a potentially powerful method of reshaping the normalized structures and quotidian practices of hegemonic masculinities.
Research Interests:
Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Feminist Theory, Television Studies, and 13 moreLiterature, Popular Culture, Masculinity Studies, Queer Theory, Sexuality, Pop Culture, Masculinity, Masculinities, Media, Studies On Men And Masculinity, Poststructuralist Theory, Film, and Mundane Masculinity
While sports games try to recreate the atmosphere of a stadium or of television broadcasts of games, role-playing and action-adventure games attempt to duplicate cinematography through animation. For Tomb Raider, the virtual reality... more
While sports games try to recreate the atmosphere of a stadium or of television broadcasts of games, role-playing and action-adventure games attempt to duplicate cinematography through animation. For Tomb Raider, the virtual reality created by the cinematic animation of the game produces an environment for male-to-female cross-gender identification, a topic that has received little critical attention. The sense of identification intended in this chapter comes from psychoanalysts Jean Laplanche and Jean-Baptiste Pontalis, who describe identification as a "psychological process in which a subject assimilates an aspect, a property, a characteristic of another and transforms himself [or herself] totally or partially on the basis of this model." Indeed, psychoanalytic literature considers such an identification to be atypical if not abnormal. Thus, Ouellette examines the cross-gender identification between the (male) audience and video game icon Lara Croft. While the reverse phenomenon, females identifying with male protagonists, has been explored, this study is (currently) alone. This chapter draws on previous works for its theoretical basis while providing a challenge to the conception of the "male gaze." More and more video games also have interactivity as a built-in feature, which alters the experience from one of passive viewing to active participation. This point is raised frequently in relation to the violence contained in many video games. The combination, it is assumed, leads (young) game players to become violent themselves. The argument that players of video games assume the violent personalities of their on-screen counterparts assumes an identification with those personae, but this is as far as the critiques go. The need exists, therefore to consider the nature of these identifications and what occurs when the player and the persona are of different genders. This chapter should be of special interest to film scholars and those interested in psychoanalytic theory as it challenges normative beliefs about media and its relation to its audience.
Research Interests:
Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, New Media, Media and Cultural Studies, Digital Humanities, and 20 moreTechnoculture, Ethnography, Popular Culture, Digital Media, Visual Culture, Video Games, Film Genre, Digital Culture, Gender, Masculinity, Video Game Theory, Digital Games, Genre Theory, Constructions of masculinity, Masculinity and Gender Studies, New Media Studies, Everyday Life, Computer Games, Microethology, and Carol Clover
This paper explore the under-explored process of cross-gender identification, especially as it appears in the Tomb Raider series of video games. By placing a female protagonist in roles previously occupied exclusively by male heroes,... more
This paper explore the under-explored process of cross-gender identification, especially as it appears in the Tomb Raider series of video games. By placing a female protagonist in roles previously occupied exclusively by male heroes, video game creators have produced an environment which defies the previously accepted notions of spectatorship and the gaze. As such, this paper not only reopens the discussion of the gaze (as an a priori), it problematizes the stability of gender.
Research Interests:
Gender Studies, Game Theory, Game studies, Feminist Theory, Digital Humanities, and 17 moreFilm Studies, Film Theory, Literature, Popular Culture, Masculinity Studies, Queer Theory, Sexuality, Gender and Sexuality, Video Games, Digital Culture, Masculinity, Video Game Theory, Media, Poststructuralist Theory, Film, Constructions of masculinity, and Masculinity and Gender Studies
The relationship between the United States and its northern neighbor Canada has generally been seen as a symbiotic one, both economically and ideologically. Recently, with the events in the Middle East, and President George W. Bush's... more
The relationship between the United States and its northern neighbor Canada has generally been seen as a symbiotic one, both economically and ideologically. Recently, with the events in the Middle East, and President George W. Bush's fixations thereof, Canada's differences have come to light as the country democratically refused to participate in the military action. Marc Ouellette, in the following article, traces the contours of this political difference -- a very different democracy -- exposing the fixations of a country with a solution for its apparent political invisibility.
Research Interests:
Comparative Literature, Ethics, Politics and Literature, Gender, Postmodernism, and 11 morePost-Colonial Theory, Pakistani Literature in English and Urdu, Post-9/11 discourse and cultural production, 9/11, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Post 9/11 literature, South Asian Literature in English, Post-9/11 Culture, Post 9/11 Canada U.s. Relations, Post Structuralist Theory, and Post 9/11 Theory
Ultimately, this paper stems from two cultural strands which intersect in one cultural form, self-improvement advertising aimed at men. The first of these is the figure of the "new man," which appeared in the mid-1980s. The novelty lies... more
Ultimately, this paper stems from two cultural strands which intersect in one cultural form, self-improvement advertising aimed at men. The first of these is the figure of the "new man," which appeared in the mid-1980s. The novelty lies in the positioning of masculine bodies precisely for the purpose of being seen. The available criticism was not equipped to account for these positionings. The second cultural strand, the proliferation of technologies which alter the body itself, as opposed to its coverings, makes the gap in the criticism more apparent. The two cultural trends intersect most noticeably in the advertisements for the products and procedures aimed at enhancing the bodily sense of masculinity. Product plugs and placements not only reflect societal trends, their entire purpose is to convince consumers that they "need" the good or service portrayed. Thus, the advertisements examined must be considered as an important part of the modern normalizing machinery of power, in general, and especially as it functions to reproduce gender-relations. While this has become a critical commonplace in terms of the impact on the perception and production of femininity, the representations of contemporary men in body enhancement advertisements demonstrate the ways in which idealized masculinities are portrayed and even enforced.
Research Interests:
Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Patristics, Masculinity Studies, Visual Culture, and 16 moreGender and Sexuality, Gender, Masculinity, Masculinities, Studies On Men And Masculinity, International Retailing, Feminist film theory, Vision and the Gaze, Retail Management, Fashion Merchandising, Desert Fathers, Global Fashion, Apparel Industry, Male Gaze, Fashion, and Fashion Industry
As it plays out in Ishiguro's novel, The Remains of the Day, the social requirement for servants to carry out their duties unseen by anyone imprints upon the identity formation of the workers. This process operates through the denial of... more
As it plays out in Ishiguro's novel, The Remains of the Day, the social requirement for servants to carry out their duties unseen by anyone imprints upon the identity formation of the workers. This process operates through the denial of the basic "mirror stage" recognition of self. What's interesting, though is that the invisibility is enforced through the kind of self surveillance that results from a panoptic gaze. Thus, the novel presents an opportunity to theorize about the intersections of Lacan's conceptualization of the gaze and Foucault's conception of its effects.
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This paper takes its cue from Vygotsky's notion that (the unfortunately named) egocentric speech becomes internalized or becomes more proficient rather than being extinguished as Piaget suggests. This speech takes the shape of a task... more
This paper takes its cue from Vygotsky's notion that (the unfortunately named) egocentric speech becomes internalized or becomes more proficient rather than being extinguished as Piaget suggests. This speech takes the shape of a task accompaniment and a means of problem solving and self-direction. Indeed, it is better understood by its more recent names, "self-regulating," or "self-directing" speech. Given the speed with which internet communication occurs, it seems a likely site for manifestations of such speech. As the paper documents, these occur with great frequency and regulatory. In fact, it is a convention.
Research Interests:
Cultural Studies, Computer Science, Information Technology, Teaching and Learning, Education, and 27 moreNew Media, Media and Cultural Studies, Web 2.0, Digital Humanities, E-learning, Internet Studies, Digital Media, Constructivism, Internet research methods, Computer-Mediated Communication, Digital Culture, Digital Media & Learning, Social Media, Pedagogy, Cognitive Linguistics, Internet & Society, Vygotsky, Language, E-learning 2.0, The Internet, LMS, PLE, Computers, Connectivism, Vygotskyan, Egocentric Speech, and Self-Directing Speech
This is an abstract for a roundtable session on adjunct faculty at the upcoming NEMLA conference, in Apr-May 2015. I will focus on the creation and the propagation of myths about adjunct faculty which serve to obfuscate the institutional... more
This is an abstract for a roundtable session on adjunct faculty at the upcoming NEMLA conference, in Apr-May 2015. I will focus on the creation and the propagation of myths about adjunct faculty which serve to obfuscate the institutional and systemic practices of marginalization.
Research Interests:
Cultural Studies, Higher Education, Equity and Social Justice in Higher Education, Higher Education Management, Higher Education Policy, and 9 moreSupporting Adjunct Faculty, Precarious Employment, Precarious Workers, Precarious Labour, Increased Use of Adjunct Faculty, Effect of Adjunct Faculty on University Governance, Effect of Adjunct Faculty on University Labor Standards, Adjunct/Contingent Faculty, and Labor Organizing Higher Education
Research Interests:
Gender Studies, New Media, Digital Humanities, Technoculture, Ethnography, and 14 moreMasculinity Studies, Digital Media, Video Games and Learning, Video Games, Gameplay (Video Game Design), Gender, Masculinity, Video Game Theory, Masculinities, Masculinity and Gender Studies, New Media Studies, Gender and Technology, Everyday Life, and Microethology
Research Interests:
Semiotics, Cultural Studies, Psychology, Social Psychology, Game studies, and 22 moreDigital Humanities, Technoculture, Ethnography, Corporate Communication, Popular Culture, Digital Media, Video Games, Consumerism, American Culture, Digital Culture, Consumer Behavior, Consumer Culture, New Media Studies, Everyday Life, Advertisement, Video Game Studies, Media and Culture, Consumption Culture, Sociology of Journalism, News Analysis, News ethics, and Microethology
"""The contemporary production of “style” relies heavily on the implementation of the “short-circuit sign” and the relationship of both to the emptiness of fourth-order simulation and to the remediation of successive visual forms. In... more
"""The contemporary production of “style” relies heavily on the implementation of the “short-circuit sign” and the relationship of both to the emptiness of fourth-order simulation and to the remediation of successive visual forms. In detailing the “short-circuit sign,” film scholar James Monaco highlights the important role of cultural codes in the naturalization and the reification of on-screen images so that signifier and signified become identical, or are perceived as such. It is the cultural codes, then, that distinguish this mode from the establishment of a sign’s iconicity, insofar as the “short-circuit sign” belongs, as it were, to the genre and also in terms of the privileging of the visual over other means of transmission. If, however, the “short-circuit sign” and its role in the production of verisimilitude exist in and through cultural codes, then the study of this form need not confine itself to the study of moving images exclusively. Yet, the intersection of the visual and the material in such signs remains largely unexplored. Similarly, while Bolter and Grusin’s Remediation updates several of McLuhan’s tenets to arrive at the ways in which visual media repurpose and retransmit other visual media, none of these have really been applied to investigate the particularized and individualized effects of viewing everything and everyone through remediated lenses. Moreover, it is a critical commonplace to suggest that Baudrillard consistently ignores the materiality of sign production. In these regards, then, style presents a unique blend of iconicity, short-circuits, prothesis, remediation and simulation that points to and problematizes the inevitable materiality of the human body as a site of and a surface for cultural production.
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Research Interests:
Semiotics, Cultural Studies, Music, Technology, New Media, and 32 moreDigital Humanities, Technoculture, Ethnography, Popular Culture, Digital Media, Gesture, Multimedia, Poetry, Cultural Semiotics, Visual Semiotics, Embodiment, Video Games, Narrative and Design, Bakhtin, Sound, Machinima, Performance, Reading, Reading Comprehension, Dialogism, Art and technology, Virtual Worlds, New Media Studies, Everyday Life, Style, Simulation & Simulacra, Cyborgs, Game Spaces, Bolter and Grusin, Spatial Story Telling, Mcluhan, and Microethology
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This is an updated version of a talk I first gave at U of T in the fall of 2008, regarding privatization of the university and its effects. I would also point readers to the article I wrote for Academic Matters for further information.... more
This is an updated version of a talk I first gave at U of T in the fall of 2008, regarding privatization of the university and its effects. I would also point readers to the article I wrote for Academic Matters for further information. The writing may not be good, but the stats are interesting.
Research Interests:
Education, Sustainability in Higher Education, Faculty Issues, Education Policy, Education and Labor Markets, and 16 moreWork and Labour, Higher Education Management, Employment, Higher Education Policy, Teaching, Temporary and Contingent Labor, Privatization, University, University Governance, Tenure, Professionalization, Academic Affairs, Contingent Work, Neoliberalism and Education, Adjunct/Contingent Faculty, and Privazitation In Education
The submissions editor of the journal describes the review as being equally suited as a teaching guide for a book that delves into the intersection of women's experiences of sexuality and their bodies in terms of their relationships to... more
The submissions editor of the journal describes the review as being equally suited as a teaching guide for a book that delves into the intersection of women's experiences of sexuality and their bodies in terms of their relationships to food.
Research Interests:
Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Sex and Gender, Women's Studies, and 16 morePopular Culture, Sexuality, Gender and Sexuality, Food, Gender, Culture, Gender, The Body, Women, Gender Theory, Feminism, Body Image, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Women and Culture, Women and Gender Studies, Food and Culture, Female body, and Food and Gender
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Hindsight makes me reconsider this review. I might go in a different direction and wonder if thinking about games and cinema offers enough. At the same time, the book does reflect contemporaneous thinking which seemed to privilege the... more
Hindsight makes me reconsider this review. I might go in a different direction and wonder if thinking about games and cinema offers enough. At the same time, the book does reflect contemporaneous thinking which seemed to privilege the idea of games as a visual medium with "interactivity" added to it and which clearly owes something to the culture produced by the thinking in film studies of the 70s.
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J. Bobby Noble really really takes to task several important and commonly held positions regarding masculinity, performance and feminism. Noble especially is to be commended for highlighting and for resolving the dilemma that Halberstam... more
J. Bobby Noble really really takes to task several important and commonly held positions regarding masculinity, performance and feminism. Noble especially is to be commended for highlighting and for resolving the dilemma that Halberstam found irreconcilable regarding the derivation of gender, one which Butler could not approach. Indeed, as Noble gently reveals, the failure is one of the culture built up around such positions and critical approaches as it is one of the approaches themselves.
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Sports films are widely produced and consumed yet are typically understood as being among the least credible Hollywood forms. Strangely, they draw less interest than the genres that receive little more than critical condemnation in the... more
Sports films are widely produced and consumed yet are typically understood as being among the least credible Hollywood forms. Strangely, they draw less interest than the genres that receive little more than critical condemnation in the ways that horror, action, weepies and teen movies do. Surprisingly, though, sports films have managed to win every major Academy Award, though tellingly "Best Actress" was the last and only happened after these books were written! The two books studied are two of the few that critically consider the form and do so in terrifically wonderful fashion.
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This is a review of a collection of essays arising from a conference on the way American culture is depicted in and through baseball in film.
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Having previously published a book on the self and text in the works of Jean Genet and Samuel Beckett, David Houston Jones turns his attention to the latter's important but generally underexamined prose fiction. This work has been misread... more
Having previously published a book on the self and text in the works of Jean Genet and Samuel Beckett, David Houston Jones turns his attention to the latter's important but generally underexamined prose fiction. This work has been misread or underappreciated when it has been considered at all, especially in terms of the tremendous and careful work Beckett does to show without showing the horrors of the Holocaust. What becomes clear in reading Jones's new work, Samuel Beckett and Testimony, is that both the source and the analysis forcefully and yet subtly call for and demonstrate the need for the interpretive work of reading. The subtlety is perhaps the most laudable since Beckett's prose more than his plays play with the indeterminacy of language and the resultant status of any signifier as a metaphor for something, if not some thing.
Research Interests:
Testimony, Literature, Samuel Beckett, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Twentieth Century Literature, and 7 moreModernism, Testimonial Literature, Samuel Beckett (Literature), Holocaust Literature, Samuel Beckett and the problem of the isolated self, Samuel Beckett and Philosophy, and Modernism, contemporary poetry, Samuel Beckett
To put it simply—if that is even a credible goal—the author rightly recognizes the relationships between and among the (north) American ideology of progress, the current era of austerity and/or recession and the perception, perpetuation,... more
To put it simply—if that is even a credible goal—the author rightly recognizes the relationships between and among the (north) American ideology of progress, the current era of austerity and/or recession and the perception, perpetuation, propagation and proliferation of myths of decline. Yet, there is so much more to the situation than that summation offers. To put it abstractly, aging, along with its effects, may well represent the singular best example of cognitive dissonance, its determinates and its denial. In this way, Morganroth Gullette argues that the current era’s relation to aging reminds one of the “1980s in relation to HIV-AIDS, and not only in terms of scientific ignorance, rumors, bad jokes” (193). Victim blaming becomes the order of the day. Significantly, this insight reappears and plays a central, if unstated, role in forming the layered, over-arching discursive formation that characterizes the problem.
Research Interests:
Non Fiction Writing, Discourse Analysis, Cultural Studies, American Studies, Gender Studies, and 19 morePolitical Economy, Sex and Gender, Women's Studies, Women's History, Gender and Sexuality, Aging, Gender, Gender Equality, Critical Discourse Analysis, Ageism, Ageing and Health, Aging & the life course, Women and Gender Studies, Healthy Aging, Age and Ageism, Culture and Ageism, Aging, Ageism, Gendered ageism, and Body Image and Aging
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More than a simple viewer trend, reality TV instead reflects the emphasis on self-improvement that marks its contemporaneous culture and politics. A darkside (and there are many) of this emphasis is that individuals can be easily marked... more
More than a simple viewer trend, reality TV instead reflects the emphasis on self-improvement that marks its contemporaneous culture and politics. A darkside (and there are many) of this emphasis is that individuals can be easily marked as failures and as the causes of their own demise due to the individualization and pathologization routines which mask and obfuscate systemic, structural and institutionalized dimensions that always already disadvantage the individual before he or she has begun.
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Until I began contemplating this review, I had never considered warning my readers about the content of my work despite my specialization and frequent engagement with gender, sex and sexuality. Indeed, I have been an anti-censorship... more
Until I began contemplating this review, I had never considered warning my readers about the content of my work despite my specialization and frequent engagement with gender, sex and sexuality. Indeed, I have been an anti-censorship advocate and I have written many times in defence of books that school boards were considering removing. Yet, I cannot cover Warren Farrell's "debate" with Daniel Sterba adequately without revealing the depth of the reductive, offensive and juvenile approach offered in the section written by Farrell and which claims to demonstrate the ways in which feminism discriminates against men. Simply put, how do I present it without presenting it? I feel the need to do more than point out that as is his norm, Farrell never mentions which (version of) feminism discriminates against men. As well, I cannot honestly treat the book without making several admissions of my own positioning. First, people who write as Farrell does make my job almost impossible, and I am certain, have cost me the opportunity for serious consideration when I have applied for tenure stream jobs in Gender Studies. Understandably, the first reaction to any male applicant has to be one of suspicion given the fraught histories of Gender Studies and of Warren Farrell. I do recall that at the first conference I attended which was devoted entirely to masculinities, the final session was on things men might appropriate from feminism and use against feminism. Even so, I believe that my effort to distance myself from "masculists" has in the end made me a better scholar; although the end hardly justifies the means and should not really be the metric within a field so dedicated to the eradication of such measures. I do fear that in the current milieu, there is actually greater acceptance for positions which suggest that feminism does discriminate against men and there is a willingness to tolerate and possibly to take seriously the kind of patently offensive material published in the first half of the Oxford UP title I am reviewing here (I also should admit that of the book reps with whom I have dealt, I probably liked my Oxford rep the best, which is too bad, because I am going to consider seriously my future dealings with them).
What I fear is that my approach will give too much credence to the ugly part of the book.
What I fear is that my approach will give too much credence to the ugly part of the book.
Research Interests:
Nathanson and Young received SSHRC support to argue in three volumes (this is the first) that the archetype of the sit-com dad and other similar constructions reveal a man-hating tendency in our culture caused by feminism. They then make... more
Nathanson and Young received SSHRC support to argue in three volumes (this is the first) that the archetype of the sit-com dad and other similar constructions reveal a man-hating tendency in our culture caused by feminism. They then make the leap of arguing that they are actually trying to support gender equity through the end of oppression. Strangely, they miss the longstanding structural, systemic and institutionalized dimensions of hegemonic masculinities, and the regimes that obfuscate them.
For a sense of my take, please see the entry for "misandry" in the Routledge International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinity," which clearly states that while a particular racialized misandry might exist (e.g., towards African-American, Jewish and now Arab/Muslim men), the idea of misandry as a generalized impulse lacks the historical, institutionalized and systemic elements that might begin to legitimate their claim. I wrote that entry! Still, I was once button-holed by some students in my 3rd yr gender studies class because they had been taught to listen for key words. The fact that I formed a sentence around misandry (i.e., to say it doesn't exist) gave voice to the term and cast suspicion. I don't blame them one bit.
For a sense of my take, please see the entry for "misandry" in the Routledge International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinity," which clearly states that while a particular racialized misandry might exist (e.g., towards African-American, Jewish and now Arab/Muslim men), the idea of misandry as a generalized impulse lacks the historical, institutionalized and systemic elements that might begin to legitimate their claim. I wrote that entry! Still, I was once button-holed by some students in my 3rd yr gender studies class because they had been taught to listen for key words. The fact that I formed a sentence around misandry (i.e., to say it doesn't exist) gave voice to the term and cast suspicion. I don't blame them one bit.
Research Interests:
Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Sex and Gender, Gender History, and 15 morePopular Culture, Gender and Sexuality, Gender, Gender Equality, Masculinity, Gender Discourse, Feminism, TV, Masculinities, Studies On Men And Masculinity, Film, Masculinity and Gender Studies, Teaching, Gender, Men and Masculinities, and Women and Gender Studies
Although I am wary of revisionism, Linda M. Scott does a good job of tracing some of the roots of American feminism to its more unsavoury sources in the form of temperance, protestantism and especially the discrimination against Irish... more
Although I am wary of revisionism, Linda M. Scott does a good job of tracing some of the roots of American feminism to its more unsavoury sources in the form of temperance, protestantism and especially the discrimination against Irish Catholic maids, nannies and other servants. What doesn't quite work as well is the attempt to connect these directly to contemporary versions of what Scott calls the anti-fashion feminists.
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Just a fantastic book about what the title states. Patient. Generous. Thorough. Never heady handed or didactic.
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Comparative Literature, Ethics, Popular Culture, Politics and Literature, Gender, and 11 morePostmodernism, TV, Post-Colonial Theory, Pakistani Literature in English and Urdu, Film, Post-9/11 discourse and cultural production, Post 9/11, Post 9/11 literature, South Asian Literature in English, Post Structuralist Theory, and Post 9/11 Theory
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This details briefly the articles for the issue and extends a call for sanity and dialogue regarding the ridiculousness that is the attachment to a particularly pernicious understanding of the 2nd amendment to the U.S. constitution.
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Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Violence, Popular Culture, Conflict, and 16 moreCultural Theory, Hermeneutics, Violence Prevention, Resistance (Social), Mourning, Critical and Cultural Theory, Gun Control, Peacebuilding, Children, Death and Dying, Mourning and Remembrance, Second amendment, Death, Grief, and Mourning, Gun Culture, Guns, 2nd Amendment Laws, and Newtown
In business, writes McMaster University’s Marc Ouellette, the virtual enterprise reduces competition while increasing standardization, an outcome antithetical to academic excellence. But the model is upon us, and that has implications for... more
In business, writes McMaster University’s Marc Ouellette, the virtual enterprise reduces competition while increasing standardization, an outcome antithetical to academic excellence. But the model is upon us, and that has implications for faculty. A virtual enterprise owns only two things: its brand and its intellectual property. The virtual enterprise model reduces capital costs and the threat of labour unrest. It is important to distinguish between virtual enterprise and virtual university. The difference is singular but is all. A virtual enterprise is foremost an engine for producing profit. Its key corollary is a massive reduction in liabilities. Thus, the virtual enterprise model is an ideal one for research intensive universities as they attempt to reap the profits from commercializing research while reducing faculty-to-student ratios and other overhead costs. However, the long-term implications for education remain unclear in the midst of this profit-driven turn.
Research Interests:
Cultural Studies, Political Economy, Higher Education, Sustainability in Higher Education, University Governance, Management And Accounting, and 12 moreNeoliberalism, Higher Education Management, Higher Education Studies, Higher Education Policy, Privatization, Virtual Enterprise, Corporatization of State Universities and Colleges, Virtual Enterprises, College access and equity, Supplemental Educational Services and other forms of privatization that affect K-12 policy, college retention in higher education among specific ethnic student populations., Privatization of Higher Education, Corporatization, and Adjunct/Contingent Faculty
Musings on the changing of seasons, semesters, the end of the "Occupy" fad, academic life and the institutionalization of activism, as it were.
Research Interests:
A response to the now-infamous Stukel letter, calling adjuncts a bunch of whiners and asking whether they should be allowed to teach our young. I take on the mythologies of Ayn Rand inspired neoliberalism and its denial and obfuscation of... more
A response to the now-infamous Stukel letter, calling adjuncts a bunch of whiners and asking whether they should be allowed to teach our young. I take on the mythologies of Ayn Rand inspired neoliberalism and its denial and obfuscation of systemic and institutionalized inequalities. In so doing, I show that it was not "tumblers," as Stukel would have it, but rather a collection of people who used a system that allows them to deny their own participation.
Research Interests:
Discourse Analysis, Cultural Studies, Higher Education, Government, Governmentality, and 18 moreCultural Theory, Faculty Development, Equity and Social Justice in Higher Education, Higher Education Management, Higher Education Studies, Higher Education Policy, Foucault and education, Foucault power/knowledge - discourse, Supporting Adjunct Faculty, Faculty Renewal, Adjunct Faculty, Faculty Diversity, Increased Use of Adjunct Faculty, Effect of Adjunct Faculty on University Research, Effect of Adjunct Faculty on University Governance, Effect of Adjunct Faculty on University Teaching, Effect of Adjunct Faculty on University Labor Standards, and Adjunct/Contingent Faculty
Just an episode that still resonates in the classroom and beyond because it stands as a reminder of how easily the dominant continuously victimizes and disempowers those who are already in such a state. Still figuring out how to blend the... more
Just an episode that still resonates in the classroom and beyond because it stands as a reminder of how easily the dominant continuously victimizes and disempowers those who are already in such a state. Still figuring out how to blend the raconteur with allusions to contemporary theory. Hmm. Would that ten-year-old me knew any of that.
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Just a little exercise from a workshop: four styles, four humours, four seasons, four decades, four . . . Enough modes and tropes come in threes. Hadn't written anything in years. My father always said I should never throw away anything I... more
Just a little exercise from a workshop: four styles, four humours, four seasons, four decades, four . . . Enough modes and tropes come in threes. Hadn't written anything in years. My father always said I should never throw away anything I write. At least one of the allusions is probably too obvious, as is the scan (or lack thereof) in the last line. The rest, though, may be too obscure to be useful.
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Encyclopedia entry for the mythical desire enhancing substance.
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While the idea of misandry as a counter to misogyny lacks any credibility due to the absence of any evidence of the historical, institutional and systemic dimensions necessary for such a claim, there is clear evidence that specific,... more
While the idea of misandry as a counter to misogyny lacks any credibility due to the absence of any evidence of the historical, institutional and systemic dimensions necessary for such a claim, there is clear evidence that specific, localized, racialized versions do, however, exist. These need to be understood and taken in terms of those additional, intersecting relations of power.
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Along with the usual section and chapter reviews, Jason and I argue that it is time for a turn, as it were, in Game Studies. The papers collected inspire and support this view.
Research Interests:
Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Game Theory, Game studies, Media and Cultural Studies, and 12 moreDigital Humanities, Digital Media, Cultural Theory, Game Design, Game/Simulation use in education, Video Games, Video Game Design, Gameplay (Video Game Design), Digital Culture, Game Based Learning, Video Game Theory, and Digital Theory and Culture
An issue to consider games as a site of political and of cultural negotiation of politics and power.
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I consider the ways in which well-meaning scholars and educators have turned invisibility from a theme into a theory and in the process have elided the contingent cultural processes with sometimes fraught cognitive and affective... more
I consider the ways in which well-meaning scholars and educators have turned invisibility from a theme into a theory and in the process have elided the contingent cultural processes with sometimes fraught cognitive and affective consequences, most specifically in teacher education. Thus, I detail not only the ways in which this occurs but also enumerate the relevant cultural processes and offer examples through a case study of the Global Issues cohort at OISE.
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Mixing personal experience with feminist theory, this paper considers the effects of the ritualized viewing of the Coen brothers’ 1998 film, The Big Lebowski. In particular, the film’s invocation of communities on and offscreen and... more
Mixing personal experience with feminist theory, this paper considers the effects of the ritualized viewing of the Coen brothers’ 1998 film, The Big Lebowski. In particular, the film’s invocation of communities on and offscreen and references to religion, to spirituality, to Jesus, and to “abiding” provide entry points for the multiple and simultaneous identifications which allow the vicarious participation of a woman afflicted by a host of contra-indicated terminal illnesses. While the setting remains domestic, in this light the critical commonplaces appear to be as imposed as the normative cultural responses to illness, which surprisingly find analogs in the diegesis. Ultimately, it is the film’s persistent references to faith and to “abiding” that provide the most poignant identification and lasting effect. Given a host of insurmountable obstacles over which one has no occasion for influence, the only plausible alternative is to abide.
Research Interests:
Mixing personal experience with feminist theory, this paper considers the effects of the ritualized viewing of the Coen brothers’ 1998 film, The Big Lebowski. In particular, the film’s invocation of communities on and offscreen and... more
Mixing personal experience with feminist theory, this paper considers the effects of the ritualized viewing of the Coen brothers’ 1998 film, The Big Lebowski. In particular, the film’s invocation of communities on and offscreen and references to religion, to spirituality, to Jesus, and to “abiding” provide entry points for the multiple and simultaneous identifications which allow the vicarious participation of a woman afflicted by a host of contra-indicated terminal illnesses. While the setting remains domestic, in this light the critical commonplaces appear to be as imposed as the normative cultural responses to illness, which surprisingly find analogs in the diegesis. Ultimately, it is the film’s persistent references to faith and to “abiding” that provide the most poignant identification and lasting effect. Given a host of insurmountable obstacles over which one has no occasion for influence, the only plausible alternative is to abide.
Research Interests:
Despite being a cultural commonplace, weddings and the related culture industry remain surprisingly underexamined in academic circles. That said, weddings provide an opportunity to examine many of late-capitalism’s enduring and... more
Despite being a cultural commonplace, weddings and the related culture industry remain surprisingly underexamined in academic circles. That said, weddings provide an opportunity to examine many of late-capitalism’s enduring and problematic traits, most notably the spectacle, consumerism and waste. All of these come together in the production of wedding pictures. These display the couple, especially the bride, as a source of envy. The pictures capture the “happiest day of their lives,” which means that every other day fails to match this transitory. Moreover, everything about the day is disposable and one quickly concludes that the people are among the items discarded. Ultimately, the wedding day, the pictures and the consumed items function as nothing more than elaborate packaging to be discarded. Thus, a consideration of the processes involved in the (re)production of weddings, and especially wedding pictures, reveals that complex imbrication of the practice within the larger operations of consumerist economies. As a corollary the paper also offers insight into alternative modes of consumption, which themselves reveal the widening gap between use-value and exchange-value as well as the extent of the (uncritically held) ideologies underpinning consumer culture.