[ecrea] CFP - Extending Play: The Sequel

Extending Play: The Sequel

Are we the species that plays—or are we better understood as the species 
that repeats?

Walter Benjamin suggests that, “For a child repetition is the soul of 
play.” Is play always at its core a form of re-play, an iteration of an 
earlier moment that resists a complete recurrence, yet is found in a 
series or sequence? We accept replication as a matter of course: 
Successful games and films always already have a sequel in the works, 
fashion is fueled by a recycling of its past, and images are 
increasingly manipulated to mimic the earlier eras of photographic 
technique. But what is the impact of these repeats, echoes, and 
continuations? And how do we understand the experience of play as a 
chain of sequels in the age of digital surrogates, cybernetic archives 
and networks of distributed storage?

Extending Play: The Sequel asks how conceptions of repetition, 
iteration, mimesis, chronography and sequence emerge through the 
dynamics and modalities of play in an increasingly repetitive, yet 
always playful world. We aim to continue the mission of the previous 
Extending Play conference, to entertain all approaches to the 
traditions, roles, and contexts of play that extend its definition and 
incorporation into far-flung and unexpected arenas. With The Sequel, we 
hope to focus on how play is culturally reproduced, repeated, continued, 
remixed, recycled, resequenced, and reimagined, and how play re-orders 
issues of power, affect, labor, identity, and privacy.

We invite scholars, students, tinkerers, artists, visionaries, and 
players to the second iteration of the Rutgers Media Studies Conference: 
Extending Play, to be held April 17th and 18th, 2015 on the Rutgers 
University campus in New Brunswick, NJ. Submissions are welcomed from 
scholars working in media studies and related fields across the 
humanities and social sciences. Our keynote conversations will include a 
conversation between Miguel Sicart (IT University of Copenhagen) and 
Anna Anthropy (Author, "Rise of the Video Game Zinesters"). Also, Marcus 
Boon (York University) will discuss the play of repetition with another 
guest who will be announced soon!

Potential topics for paper, panel, roundtable, and workshop submissions 
include, but are not limited to:

--Sequels, serials, remakes, covers, reprints, reissues, remixes, 
remasters, reprises, series, and sagas
--Media industries, including the business of sequels, franchises, and 
brands
--Social media and re-circulation, including memes, retweets, repins, 
and reblogs
--Resequencing, repetition, and the news industry
--Biomedia, genetic sequencing, and clones
--Sequels and repetition in history and historical knowledge, including 
global conflict, archives, and dynasties
--Mimicry, mimesis, and mirroring
--Repetition, continuation, and sequencing in digital networks, 
databases, and big data approaches
--Cultural Studies, Media Studies, Game Studies, Fan Studies, Critical 
Cultural Studies, Critical Media Studies, Critical Game Studies, and more!

Rutgers Media Studies Conference Extending Play: The Sequel promises to 
offer a memorable meeting of ludic inquiry, and to that end, we are 
looking to play with standard conference conventions. One track 
throughout the conference will be a series of public workshop sessions 
in which scholars and practitioners will host roundtable discussions on 
contemporary issues that bring together an audience of experts and 
interested parties. In the academic panel track, each presenter will 
have a maximum of 15 minutes to offer his or her ideas as a presentation 
or interactive conversation, and will choose one of the following 
methods of presentation:
--material accompaniment (hand out a zine, scrapbook, postcards, etc)
--performance (spoken word, song, verse, dance, recording, etc)
--limited visuals (a maximum of 3 slides and 25 total words)
--game (create rules and incorporate audience play)


For additional ideas on how to play with media, play with time, or play 
with space during your presentation, visit our website at 
mediacon.rutgers.edu.

The deadline for proposals is Monday, December 1, 2014. We invite 
individual proposals, full panel proposals (of four members), and 
proposals for roundtable and workshop sessions. Please use the 
submission form on our website at http://mediacon.rutgers.edu/submit/ . 
If you would like to submit supplementary materials, or have trouble 
with the form, please send a 256 word abstract to 
(extendingplay /at/ gmail.com). Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by 
January 15, 2015.

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