Magic or Mayhem? New Texts and New Literacies in Technological Times
The title of this session comes from a 1999 computer game, Magic and Mayhem. A highly literary fantasy/problem solving game drawing on myth and narratives ranging from Classical Greek to Arthurian. Initially a perfect choice for a curriculum designed around fantasy and popular culture, the game examplifies what it might means for literacy to be shifting in the direction of design (Kress and van Leeuin 1996. Kress 1995, New London group 1996 et al.). Yet, also characteristically, despite the enthusiasm of teachers workingin the project with which this paper is concerned, the game was ultimatly rejected as a textual choice because of age ratings and attendant fears. violence, panics, and community apprehensions about the anti-social and anti-literacy nature of games. ‘Magic and Mayhem’ speaks both to the possibilities and to the disruptiveness of linking literacy and curriculum with computer games.
"The Magic Potion" - An Adventure Game for Learning
This communication presents the Magic Potion, an adventure game for learning that has been developed by the EPINOISI project in Greece for students with mild intellectual disability, and discusses in detail the design principles that have been adopted, and choices that have been made, regarding the game’s narrative and gameplay structure as well as the balance that it has been necessary to maintain between these two.
“To those who choose to follow in our footsteps”: making women/LGBT+ soldiers (in)visible through feminist “her-story” theater
Building on Judith Butler ’ s understanding of visibility as “ the object of continuous regulation and contestation, ” art/aesthetics studies in international relations, and feminist theater studies, we identify feminist “ her-story ” theater as a unique site where Western “ gender-/sexuality-inclusive ” soldiering is visibilized, contested, and subverted. Drawing on ethnographic observations of two award-winning dramas, interviews with artists and military hosts, and ﬁ ndings from a wider research project on contemporary British military culture, we reveal the key role of heteronormative and patriarchal cultural discourses in reproducing the ambivalent positionalities of women/LGBT+ soldiers. We argue that the very visibility of women/LGBT+ soldiers on the stage paradoxically operates to make the complexities of – and struggles against – masculinized heteronormative military cultures invisible. Furthermore, despite artists ’ attempts to dissociate empowerment through soldiering from the problematic context of modern con ﬂ icts, “ her-story ” theater ultimately entrenches gendered/racialized hierarchies that normalize Western military interventions. We conclude that only through sustained feminist re ﬂ ection on the contours of “ imagined ” futures of female/ LGBT+ soldiering can this persistently problematic (in)visibility be productively disrupted.