Recent Grad Research: "Choice: Texas"
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEZ4gs2Iwng?feature=player_embedded]Recent Ph.D. grad Carly Kocurek is collaborating on the development of an interactive fiction game addressing reproductive healthcare and abortion access in Texas. The game, titled “Choice: Texas” will be a free to play web game scheduled for release early next year. Currently, she and co-developer Allyson Whipple are fundraising through IndieGoGo to support development costs. Here’s a description of the project from their IndieGoGo page:
Choice: Texas is an educational interactive fiction game which will be freely available on the web. Players will explore the game through one of several characters, each of whom reflects specific socioeconomic, geographic, and demographic factors impacting abortion access in Texas. Although billed as interactive fiction, Choice: Texas is based on extensive research into healthcare access, legal restrictions, geography, and demographics, and is reflective of the real circumstances facing women in the state.Choice: Texas is being developed by Allyson Whipple (writer, editor, and poet) and Carly Kocurek (writer and cultural historian) with the help of illustrator Grace Jennings.We are billing Choice: Texas as “a very serious game,” and we mean that. While the game is intended to be engaging, the issues it addresses are very serious. Women’s access to reproductive healthcare in Texas is significantly limited, a state of affairs that is especially true for women who are working class or poor, or who live in rural areas. One of the great strengths of games is that they can invite players to explore other people’s experiences; Choice: Texas is such a game, and asks players to seriously consider the plight of Texas women.Choice: Texas has already gained some positive responses, including acceptance into the Future and Reality of Gaming (F.R.O.G.) 2013 Conference in Vienna. We will have a working prototype of the game prepared by the conference dates in late September, and look forward to completing the game by February 2014.
Carly and Allyson have already raised just over half of their goal, and have until 11:59 p.m. PT on September 18 to meet their goal. Check out their IndieGoGo here and follow their project blog here.
Grad Research (?): Featuring the Machine in the Garden Softball Team
Conference Preview: Keynote Address by Dr. Claire Jean Kim
Only one more day to wait! This Thursday and Friday, the American Studies Graduate Student Conference will take place at the Texas Union. Click here for a full schedule.
Today we'd like to offer you a special invitation to our keynote address by Dr. Claire Jean Kim (Political Science and Asian American Studies, UC Irvine). Dr. Kim's address is entitled, "The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Michael Vick" and will take place on Thursday, April 4 from 6:00p.m. - 7:30p.m. in NOA 1.124.Here's a little more on our keynote speaker:
Claire Jean Kim received her B.A. in Government from Harvard College and her Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University. She is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Asian American Studies at University of California, Irvine, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate classes on racial politics, multiculturalism, social movements, and human-animal studies. Dr. Kim’s first book, Bitter Fruit: The Politics of Black-Korean Conflict in New York City (Yale University Press, 2000) won two awards from the American Political Science Association: the Ralph Bunche Award for the Best Book on Ethnic and Cultural Pluralism and the Best Book Award from the Organized Section on Race and Ethnicity. She is completing a second book, Multiculturalism On Edge: Contesting Race, Species, and Nature (Cambridge University Press, 2014), which examines the intersection of race and species in impassioned disputes over how immigrants of color, racialized minorities, and Native people in the U.S. use animals in their cultural traditions. Dr. Kim has also written numerous journal articles and book chapters. She has been the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of California Center for New Racial Studies, and she has been a fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey and the University of California Humanities Research Institute. Dr. Kim is an Associate Editor of American Quarterly and the co-guest editor with Carla Freccero of a special issue of American Quarterly entitled, Species/Race/Gender, forthcoming in September 2013.
Hope to see you there!
Conference Preview: American Nightmares
The conference is two short days away, and today we bring you our last post in a series of sneak peeks at the American Studies Graduate Student Conference: a panel entitled "American Nightmares."
- Sara O’Neill, “Longing for the Zombie Apocalypse: Max Brooks’ World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War and Contemporary America”
- Susan Quesal, “The John Wayne Gacy House as Metaphor for America”
- David Juarez, “‘I was Gerard’: Saintliness, Sorrow, and Shame in Jack Kerouac’s Visions of Gerard"
- Kayla Rhidenour, “The Dream of a Soldier, The Promise of a Nation”
- Regina Mills, “The Indescribable and Undiscussable in George Washington Gómez: The Trauma of An American Dream”
This panel will be the final panel of the conference and will take place on Friday, April 5 from 4:00p.m. – 5:30p.m. in the Texas Union, 4.206 Chicano Culture Room. This is definitely one you don't want to miss!