punctum books
Historiographies of Game Studies: What It Has Been, What It Could Be
- Alisha Karabinus(editor)
- Carly A. Kocurek(editor)
- Cody Mejeur(editor)
- Emma Vossen(editor)
Export Metadata
| Title | Historiographies of Game Studies |
|---|---|
| Subtitle | What It Has Been, What It Could Be |
| Contributor | Alisha Karabinus(editor) |
| Carly A. Kocurek(editor) | |
| Cody Mejeur(editor) | |
| Emma Vossen(editor) | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.53288/0441.1.00 |
| Landing page | https://punctumbooks.com/titles/historiographies-of-game-studies-what-it-has-been-what-it-could-be/ |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ |
| Copyright | Alisha Karabinus, Carly A. Kocurek, Emma Vossen, Cody Mejeur |
| Publisher | punctum books |
| Publication place | Earth, Milky Way |
| Published on | 2025-07-25 |
| ISBN | 978-1-68571-200-6 (Paperback) |
| 978-1-68571-201-3 (PDF) | |
| Long abstract | Historiographies of Game Studies offers a first-of-its-kind reflection on how game studies as an academic field has been shaped and sustained. Today, game studies is a thriving field with many dedicated national and international conferences, journals, professional societies, and a strong presence at conferences in disciplines like computer science, communication, media studies, theater, visual arts, popular culture, and others. But, when did game studies start? And what (and who) is at the core or center of game studies? Fields are defined as much by what they are not as by what they are, and their borderlands can be hotly contested spaces. In this anthology, scholars from across the field consider how the boundaries of game studies have been established, codified, contested, and protected, raising critical questions about who and what gets left out of the field. Over more than two dozen chapters and interviews with leading figures, including Espen Aarseth, Kishonna Gray, Henry Jenkins, Lisa Nakamura, Kentaro Matsumoto, Ken McAllister, and Janet Murray, the contributors offer a dazzling array of insightful provocations that address the formation, propagation, and cultivation of game studies, interrogating not only the field’s pasts but its potential futures and asking us to think deliberately about how academic fields are collectively built. |
| Print length | 780 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |
| Dimensions | 127 x 45 x 203 mm | 5" x 1.76" x 8" (Paperback) |
| Weight | 957g | 33.76oz (Paperback) |
| LCCN | 2025936417 |
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Contents
Frontmatter
(pp. 1–15)- Alisha Karabinus
- Carly A. Kocurek
- Cody Mejeur
- Emma Vossen
- Bianca Batti
Young Scholars, and Old Debates: Why the Ludology Versus Narratology “Debate” Cannot Be Forgotten
(pp. 67–93)- Emma Vossen
- Jennifer deWinter
- Gillian Smith
- Cody Mejeur
- Dennis Jansen
- Kirk M. Lundblade
Video or Digital? Exploring the Use of Terminology and Connected Approaches in the History of Game Studies
(pp. 195–225)- Jasper van Vught
- Joris Veerbeek
- Tobias Unterhuber
Queering the Game Studies Canon: A Polemical Reading of Roger Caillois’s "Man, Play and Games"
(pp. 251–272)- Bo Ruberg
- Judd Ethan Ruggill
Re-Historicizing Game Studies with C.L.R. James
(pp. 293–306)- Cameron Kunzelman
- Michael Lutz
A Story or a Machine? Revisiting the Work of Bohuslav Blažek, the Czechoslovak Pioneer of Game Studies
(pp. 307–329)- Jaroslav Švelch
- Liam Mitchell
- Carly A. Kocurek
Reflecting on the Evolution of Intersectional Game Studies: An Interview with Lisa Nakamura
(pp. 369–388)- Sarah Christina Ganzon
- Outi Kaarina Laiti
Anthropology, Play Studies, and the Entanglements of Game Studies: Two Roads Diverged in an Ivory Wood
(pp. 411–430)- Laya Liebeseller
- Josh Rivers
- Stephanie C. Jennings
- Michael Anthony DeAnda
The Separation of Analog and Digital Game Studies
(pp. 491–510)- Evan Torner
Navigating Public History and Game Preservation: In Conversation with the Computerspielemuseum
(pp. 511–523)- Racquel M. Gonzales
Archiving Play, Archiving Histories: Preserving Games Hardware, Software, and Experience
(pp. 525–545)- Lee W. Hibbard
- Justin Wigard
- betsy brey
- Adrienne Shaw
- victoria l. braegger
- Christopher A. Paul
- Samuel Poirier-Poulin
The Influence of Aesthetics and Semiotics on Game Research in Japan: An Interview with Matsumoto Kentaro
(pp. 697–715)- Douglas Schules
“There’s Nothing Written about It”: Disciplinarity, Regionality, and the Ghosts Haunting Game Studies
(pp. 717–734)- Alison Harvey
- Alisha Karabinus
Contributor Biographies
(pp. 761–774)Contributors
Alisha Karabinus
(editor)Assistant Professor of Writing and Digital Studies at Grand Valley State University
Alisha Karabinus (she/her) is Assistant Professor of Writing and Digital Studies at Grand Valley State University. She researches intersections between games and rhetoric.
Carly A. Kocurek
(editor)Professor of Digital Humanities and Media Studies at Illinois Institute of Technology
Carly A. Kocurek (she/her) is Professor of Digital Humanities and Media Studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology. She researches the cultural history of video games with an emphasis on gender identity. Her books include Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade (University of Minnesota Press, 2015) and Brenda Laurel: Pioneering Games for Girls (Bloomsbury, 2017), and, with Matthew Thomas Payne, Ultima and Worldbuilding in the Computer Role-Playing Game (Amherst, 2024). She is researching the history and impact of the games for girls movement as part of a project funded by the National Science Foundation. Her articles have appeared in outlets including The American Journal of Play, Feminist Media Histories, Game Studies, Velvet Light Trap, and others.
Cody Mejeur
(editor)Assistant Professor of Game Studies at University at Buffalo, State University of New York
Cody Mejeur (they/them) is Assistant Professor of Game Studies at University at Buffalo, SUNY. Their work uses games to theorize narrative as an embodied and playful process that constructs how we understand ourselves, our realities, and our differences. They have published on games pedagogy, gender and queerness in games, and video game narratives and player experiences, and they are currently the game director for Trans Folks Walking, a narrative game about trans experiences. They are Director of the Amatryx Gaming Lab & Studio at UB and work with the LGBTQ Video Game Archive on preserving and visualizing LGBTQ representation. They are an executive council member for the International Society for the Study of Narrative and they served as Diversity Officer for the Digital Games Research Association.
Emma Vossen
(editor)Assistant Professor of Game Studies at Brock University
Emma Vossen (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Game Studies in the Department of Digital Humanities at Brock University, Canada. Her work focuses on the intersections of politics, identity, and technology, particularly in the context of digital games. She has been an outspoken and ongoing voice in the discussion around online radicalization, digital violence, and contemporary fascism since 2013. Many publications, including ABC News, CBC News, NBC News, Wired, Maclean's Magazine, The Washington Post, University Affairs Magazine, Toxic Avenger Magazine, and Electronic Gaming Monthly, have interviewed her about her work. In 2016, CBC Ideas produced "The Dangerous Game: Gamergate and the 'Alt-Right,'" a 40-minute radio documentary about her dissertation research, which was broadcast nationally. Vossen is an award-winning public speaker and the co-author and co-editor of the books Feminism in Play (Palgrace Macmillan, 2018) and the former editor-in-chief of First Person Scholar.