Games and Play in China–cfp

Dear all,

A friendly reminder that the abstracts for the edited volume “Games and Play in China from the Early Modern to the Contemporary” are due by May 15, 2019. Interested authors, please submit chapter proposals of 500-750 words to Douglas Eyman <deyman@gmu.edu>, Hongmei Sun <shongmei@gmu.edu>, and Li Guo <li.guo@usu.edu>. Please see the following for details.

CFP: Games and Play in China from the Early Modern to the Contemporary
Editors: Douglas Eyman, Li Guo, and Hongmei Sun

The editors of this volume invite submission of chapters that address the ‘cultural rhetorics of gaming’ – that is, the ways in which games inhabit, represent, disrupt, or transform cultural and social practices in specific contexts. Scholarship on games and gaming has proliferated across a number of fields, including game studies, rhetoric and writing, translation studies, and education, among others. Gaming is fast becoming a nearly ubiquitous activity with global reach (particularly digital gaming – but not just limited to online activity, as increased sales of board games and role-playing games attest). The central argument in this collection is that games operate as cultural agents specific to their temporal and ecological contexts. Games are connected to the times in which they were invented, and represent the cultural functions of that time, but also continue beyond the moment of origination and connect past concerns to those in the present. Changes in the context of games – transcultural transformation – can demonstrate relationships between and among disparate cultures, as represented through game adaptations. In a similar vein, games also interact with other media, including literature and film, in ways that convey cultural value.

This collection consists of two parts: the first part will focus on games in pre-modern China and the second will address games in modern and contemporary contexts. Given the historical range, “games” can be analog (card or dice games, literary games, drinking games, board games, role-playing games, etc.) or digital (videogames, mobile games, virtual reality). The two-part structure of this edited volume invites scholarly attention to the history and practice of games, their continuity, convergence, and environment, as well as their enduring social and structural legacies in everyday life from premodern China to the present era. Authors of the volume collectively inquire how game and play reconfigure cultural circulation and exchanges between divergent social groups, and generate nascent modes of reading or affective experiences. By reconfiguring the notion of game through the theoretical lens of play, the edited volume endeavors to explore new understandings of agency, subjectivity, paratextuality, spectatorship, gender, sexuality, inter-medial or cross-cultural adaptations, and literary, artistic, or digital auteurship. Proposed chapters may address any of the aforementioned connections or propose resonant themes.

Hongmei Sun, PhD <shongmei@gmu.edu>
Assistant Professor of Chinese
Modern and Classical Languages
George Mason University

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