[Commlist] Call for Chapters: Femininities in Videogames

CFP:  Abstracts for inclusion in the edited volume /Femininities in 
Videogames/ contracted to Palgrave Macmillan
Edited by Dr Stephanie Harkin (RMIT University) and Heather Blakey 
(University of Western Australia)

Videogames have always been feminine — from hyper-gendered girls’ games
to the refashioning of dressing up and dollhouses to ‘gear’ and 
‘basebuilding’
in games today (Brierley-Beare, 2025). While substantial ink has been 
spilled
on videogame masculinities, the /Femininities in Videogames/ anthology
introduces critical femininities to Games Studies. A Critical Femininities
(Dahl, 2012; Hoskin & Blair, 2021; 2024) approach to videogames accounts for
intersectional complexity and advocates for the serious treatment of
femininity.

Femininity is fuelled with contention and contradiction: its pervasive
coupling with girlhood and womanhood carries troubling ideological
implications, presented to girls as both compulsory and inferior. Femininity
itself has been historically undervalued in feminist scholarship produced
across Europe, North America and parts of Oceania (see Hoskin 2017; Hoskin
& Blair, 2024). Some western feminist scholarship also misplaces white
femininity as universal, obscuring diasporas of feminine expression and the
white supremacist politics that define ‘normative’ femininity (Hoskin, 
2017).

Social and scholarly perceptions of femininities are connected to gender
stereotypes, patriarchal regulation, weakness, infantilism, low culture, and
aesthetic excess. In tandem with homophobia, femmephobia moreover works
to uphold heteronormative gender expression, but is also present within
LGBTQ+ communities (McCann, 2018). To view femininity as inherently
disempowering, however, is to overlook its pleasurable realities, 
plurality of
expressions, and resistant potential.

Feminine videogame design cannot accurately be relegated to the frivolous
and inconsequential. Papergames’ dating otome game /Love and Deepspace/ has
over 50 million global users (/Love and Deepspace/, 2025); /Roblox/’s 
‘Dress to
Impress’ has been played more than 2.7 billion times (Roy, 2024); and ‘Cosy’
has become a staple genre for gentle play. In a media-sphere simultaneously
characterised by post-feminism (Gill, 2007; McRobbie, 2009), popular
feminism (Banet-Weiser, 2018), and far-right anti-feminism (Leidig, 2023),
femininity is increasingly visible across a wide axis of politics.

/Femininities in Videogames /has been contracted to Palgrave Macmillan for
publication. Editors invite contributions that engage with past and present
forms of feminine game design and the pleasures and perils of feminine
videogames and videogame cultures. Contributions may explore the value of
feminine traditions in games, how those traditions are extended, or even
radically subverted. /We particularly encourage abstracts related to 
queer and trans/
/femininity, non-Western femininity, and on the games industry’s 
relationship to/
/femininity./

Submissions are encouraged to engage with feminist scholarship to reflect on
how videogames contribute to understandings of femininity and, inversely,
how femininity contributes to our understanding of videogames.
*
*
*Possible topics may include: *
*
*

  * Femmephobia in videogame culture or game studies
  *
    Feminine aesthetics in videogames
  *
    Femme and queer readings of videogames
  *
    Colonial and neo-colonial femininity
  *
    Intersections with race, class, disability, culture, body size
  *
    Patriarchal femininity and gender regulation
  *
    Environmental/ ecocritical femininities
  *
    Streaming and feminine performances
  *
    Feminine identity construction
  *
    Feminine material culture i.e. magazines, hardware, consoles,
    collectibles
  *
    Feminine expression through modding
  *
    Feminine heroics
  *
    Commercial femininity/ corporate sponsorships/ partnerships
  *
    Entrepreneurial femininity
  *
    Resistant femininity
  *
    Subversive femininities
  *
    Glitches and “playing” with femininity
  *
    Humour and/or parodying femininity
  *
    Geek femininity


Topics are not limited to these areas. Please treat this list as 
suggestive only.

Submission Guidelines

Please submit a 200–250 word abstract with references and author/s biography
(max 100 words per author) to (stephanie.harkin /at/ rmit.edu.au) 
<mailto:(stephanie.harkin /at/ rmit.edu.au)> by 21st August
2026. Please use APA 7 style for your references. These do not contribute to
your abstract word count.

For more information visit: 
https://femininityinvideogames.my.canva.site/ 
<https://femininityinvideogames.my.canva.site/>
*
*
*References*
*
*
Banet-Weiser, S. (2018). Empowered: Popular feminism and popular 
misogyny (Durham:
Duke University Press).

Brierley-Beare, A. (2025). The language of digital love: Introducing a 
taxonomy of
romance for the AAA Game.” Game Studies, 25 (2).
https://gamestudies.org/2502/articles/brierleybeare 
<https://gamestudies.org/2502/articles/brierleybeare>

Dahl, U. (2012). “Turning like a femme: Figuring critical femininity 
studies.” NORA -
Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 20(1): 57–64.

Gill, R. (2007). Postfeminist media culture: Elements of a sensibility. 
European Journal of
Cultural Studies, 10(2), 147-166.

Harkin, S. (2025). “Studying the invisible: Femininity and gaming in 
girls’ lifestyle
magazines.” Digital Games Research Association, 30 June–4 July, 2025, 
University of
Malta.

Hoskin, R. A. (2017). Femme interventions and the proper feminist 
subject: Critical
approaches to decolonizing western feminist pedagogies. Cogent Open 
Access Social
Sciences, 3(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2016.1276819 
<https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2016.1276819>.

Hoskin, R. A., & Blair, K. L. (2021). Critical femininities: A ‘new’ 
approach to gender
theory. Psychology & Sexuality, 13(1), 1–8.

Hoskin, R. A., & Blair, K. L. (2024). Mind the (feminine) gap: 
Documenting femmephobic
knowledge production and the masculinization of expertise. Journal of 
Femininities, 1, 2–
30.

Love and Deepspace [@loveanddeepspace]. (2025, January 22). “Just now, 
Love and
Deepspace achieved the milestone of 50 Million Global Users!” 
[Photograph]. Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DFHR743vRjz/?hl=en 
<https://www.instagram.com/p/DFHR743vRjz/?hl=en>

Leidig, E. (2023). The women of the far right : social media influencers 
and online
radicalization. Columbia University Press. 
http://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780231558303 
<http://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780231558303>

McCann, H. (2018). Beyond the visible: Rethinking femininity through the 
femme
assemblage. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 25(3), 278–292.

McRobbie, A. (2009). The aftermath of feminism: Gender, culture and 
social change
(London: Sage, 2009).


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