Most of us have faced the dreadful challenge of creating a new course prep with only a few weeks (or days!) to get ready. Even if you have enough time to prepare, it can still be difficult to gauge whether the syllabus is effective or not. A syllabus sets the tone of the course. It is more than just a checklist or collection of policies and procedures. It has activities, readings, and assignments, and preparing for all of those can seem like a daunting task and make you think, “if only I could get some insights on making this course…
Author: Sarah Hughes
Nupoor Ranade, Jianfen Chen, Sarah Hughes
Sarah Hughes is a PhD candidate in the Joint Program in English & Education at the University of Michigan, where she also teaches in the English Department Writing Program. Her research interests include digital rhetoric, gender and discourse, and gaming studies. Her dissertation project explores how women use multimodal discourse—grammatically, narratively, and visually—to navigate online gaming ecologies.
I approached the arcade on a clear but chilly Tuesday in December. It stood out against the crowded backdrop of Ann Arbor storefronts with its fuchsia awning and blocky, western-style letters. Glowing neon signs on the window caught my attention: there were smiling pink elephants, downward pointing arrows, and the words “Games,” “Pool,” and “Open” inviting me in. I grabbed the door handle, pulled hard, and shuffled inside out of the biting wind to find myself standing at the top of a steep stairway. Like stepping into a time machine, I descended into the neon glow of the dim basement…
Presenters: Samantha Blackmon (Purdue U, West Lafayette) and TreaAndrea Russworm (U of Massachusetts) For a session starting at 8:30 in the morning, there are few empty seats as the panel, a critical consideration of the portrayal of race in video games, begins. Samantha Blackmon and TreaAndrea Russworm share nuanced and future-focused analyses of popular Triple-A titles, attending especially to the games’ cultural contexts: how they function in conversation with other games released around the same time and how their representations of race affected how they were received by the public. The session concludes with a lively conversation with the audience…