[Commlist] Disability Game Studies CFP

*CFP*
*Working Title of Scholarly Collection:* /Disability Game Studies/

*Description: *
This CFP is looking for chapters for an edited collection to address the 
scarcity of disabled voices and representations in games by providing a 
foundational text for the intersection of disability and game studies. 
In short, we are seeking chapters that act as foundational texts for the 
different ways disability identity is being observed in gaming media 
while promoting disability and game studies research.
The study of representation in games is a growing area in academia, 
especially since conversations about the cultural ramifications of 
stereotypical or harmful representations have entered popular discourse. 
Despite this, disability representation has been significantly 
overlooked in the face of able-bodied and neurotypical predispositions. 
As it stands now, rehabilitative games research is abundant in the STEM 
and psychology fields and often reproduces Eli Clare’s “ideology of 
cure”—seeking to cure or eradicate disability. Taking inspiration from 
Bonnie Ruberg and Adrienne Shaw’s/ Queer Game Studies/ and Katie 
Ellis, Tama Leaver, Mike Kent’s /Gaming Disability: Disability 
Perspectives on Contemporary Video Games/, we hope that this edited 
collection will provide scholars with significant resources to 
investigate further the intersection of disability and game studies from 
a humanities perspective.
Games have received greater attention in academia over the past decade, 
both in terms of game-based courses in the humanities and campus 
facilities designed for courses and research in game studies. There has 
also been a rising number of games with alternative approaches, goals, 
and mechanics that allow for more nuanced and expansive representations 
of disability. What makes this CFP timely is that this attention to 
games is coupled with increased rehabilitative games research. While 
several scholars are working at the intersection of disability and games 
(Adan Jerreat-Poole, Cecilia Rodéhn, Diane Carr, Sky LaRell Anderson), 
the field has not received the critical attention it deserves in 
mainstream gaming culture or game studies. Building off the insight of 
these and other scholars, we are interested in authors exploring their 
research and thinking about how games approach disability through their 
narratives, representation, mechanics, or other aspects. This edited 
collection seeks to serve as a foundational compilation of current 
disability game studies scholarship that focuses on non-rehabilitative 
frameworks, such as Elizabeth Ellcessor and Bill Kirkpatrick’s concepts 
of “crip negotiation” and “cripping” strategies in /Disability Media 
Studies/, for example.
We are especially interested in hearing from scholars who exist within 
or in proximity to disability community spaces and have observed 
gameplay and design in a wide range of settings. Instead of fixating on 
the problematic representations tied to assumptions about normative 
bodies and minds, including the connections between disability, mental 
illness, and neurodivergence, we hope to reveal how each author observes 
intersectional approaches to disability through gaming media.
The proposed edited book intends to fill the gap in this research by 
sharing scholarly essays from interdisciplinary perspectives, ranging 
from theoretical perspectives to case studies, on questions such as:

  * How can disability studies benefit from a game studies perspective
    through designing games around or playing and analyzing games
    through the lenses of issues of disability and ableism?
  * How can we celebrate failure in tabletop roleplaying game RPG media
    without normalizing the pain and hardships experienced by the
    disability communities?
  * How can we critique romanticized, essentializing, or otherwise
    problematic depictions of disability in RPG design while avoiding
    the common framing of disabled characters as inferior?
  * How can RPG narratives and game mechanics exhibit methods of game
    design that acknowledge the diverse experiences of disability while
    still being critical of disabling politics and social injustice in
    the real world?
  * How can ethnography and autoethnography be used to develop tools for
    analyzing narrative and game design practices?
  * How can we apply complex embodiment to roleplaying games when
    developing, playing, or reflecting on characters with disabilities?
  * How do games and gaming media promote the agency of players with
    disabilities concerning their characters or avatars and the game’s
    environment, mechanics, or other aspects of play?
  * How do we account for difficulty settings and other inclusive and
    access-based game designs and practices in making the game
    accessible without alienating the challenge?

Additionally, the book intends to scrutinize the following 
non-exhaustive topics:

  * The role of trauma and memory
  * Race and disability, with particular interest in Indigenous game
    studies submissions.
  * Gender and sexuality, (hyper)masculinity, femininity, and
    queerness/feminist or eco-feminism, regarding disability
  * Posthumanism and transhumanism in fantasy (i.e., becoming-machine
    and becoming-other) (Deleuze)
  * Embodiment of technology and prosthetics
  * Medical innovations and healing
  * Cures and diseases translated from the game world to our world
  * Neurodivergent versus neurotypical game mechanics
  * Embodied and philosophical approaches to characters and narratives
  * Character and political motives for or against disability justice in
    and out of the game
  * Historical influences and precedents to disability tropes in
    roleplaying games
  * Narrative considerations for in-game dreams, nightmares, magic, and
    the supernatural
  * Failure and its philosophical and rhetorical value for disability
    themes as discussed by Jay Dolmage, Jack Halberstam, Jesper Juul,
    José Esteban Muñoz, David Payne, and Bo Ruberg.

If interested, please email abstracts of up to 300 words to Giuseppe 
Femia at (_gwfemia /at/ uwaterloo.ca) <mailto:(gwfemia /at/ uwaterloo.ca)>___by 
November 30, 2024. Please also include a bio of 200-300 words.
Final submissions will be around, but at most, 8,000 words and follow 
Chicago 17 citation format. These submissions will likely go through an 
external peer review process decided by the publisher.

The deadlines are as follows:
November 30, 2024: Abstract and author bio
February 28, 2025: First draft of chapters
April 30, 2025: Final chapters

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