[csaa-forum] ACS Virtual Lecture Series, June 16th: Mark Maletska 'Approaching gender identity through video games'

[Timothy Laurie]

***apologies for cross-posting***

Dear colleagues,

The Association for Cultural Studies (ACS) welcomes you to an upcoming talk in its Virtual Lecture Series, by Mark Maletska (Tampere University, Finland), titled ‘Approaching gender identity through video games’ (followed by a Q&A), which will take place on June 16th, 3 PM EEST/ Eastern European Summer Time (GMT +3) (more information underneath).

For more information on the Virtual Lecture Series and upcoming talks, please visit: https://www.cultstud.org/wordpress/virtual-lecture-series/ 

Mark Maletska (Tampere University, Finland) — Approaching gender identity through video games
June 16th, 2023, 3 PM EEST/ Eastern European Summer Time (GMT +3)

Abstract: Even though video games are gaining popularity among a wider audience in recent years, there are lots of stereotypes still existing around games and gamers, both within and outside gaming communities. A popular image of a ‘nerdy male gamer spending hours in a dark room playing Dota 2’ affects expectations of what a ‘gamer’ is supposed to be and is often applied to many people interested in video games. That is probably why researchers nowadays are trying to deconstruct these stereotypes and show the diversity among players with much research already done on gender expression or stereotypes related to gaming. There is, for example, a separate area studying women in video game communities. Lots of those studies, however, are limited to binaries (male-female) and do not fully cover transgender, agender, gender fluid or non-binary folks. So, in this talk, I want to focus on queer, i.e. not cisgender, identities and their connection with video games by looking at experiences of gender-diverse players.

The idea to look into video games arose from my and my friends’ personal experience of playing video games. I already worked within video game philosophy back in Ukraine, but, sadly, it was not really possible to study topics around LGBTQIA+ there. Meanwhile, being a trans man myself and watching other people playing, I noticed a similar experience among queer players – some video games resonated with their identities, even when there were no queer characters or game story was not related to LGBTQIA+ at all. I first saw this while playing Dark Souls 2 (FromSoftware), the game with the ‘easter egg’ allowing a player to change avatar’s gender; I also had a similar experience while playing Deltarune (Toby Fox), a game which allows a player to create an avatar and then deletes it without player’s permission, saying “No one can choose who they are in this world”. Later, I found that the phenomenon of perceiving a game as a reflection of queer identities was broader than I thought – the full Celeste (Matt Makes Games) game was read as a metaphor to gender transition by its community.
Based on these autoethnographic observations and a detailed literature review, with my current research, I plan to fill in the gap in the research related to queer gender identities and playing video games.

My research consists of the main part, where I am interested in experiences of LGBTQIA+ players around the world, and a smaller project focusing on Ukrainian players. The research project is supported by the MSCA4Ukraine grant.
You can read my blog post about my research here: https://coe-gamecult.org/2023/06/01/mark-maletska-interaction-with-video-games-as-a-way-to-explore-queer-gender-identities-a-study-in-progress/ . If you wish to participate in the survey and share your experience of playing video games as an LGBTQIA+ individual, you can do so here https://survey.tuni.fi/lime/232829?lang=en Your input would be very much appreciated!

Bio: Mark Maletska (MPhil) is a Doctoral Researcher and PhD candidate at Tampere University, also affiliated with The Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies (CoE GameCult). His dissertation research is focused on relationship between video game mechanics and gender identity self-discovery processes. Prior to current position, M. Maletska was a teacher of philosophy at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, Ukraine; he moved to Finland in November 2022, being invited as a visiting researcher by the University of Jyväskylä. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3123-9500 

To register for this free event, please email: mailto:vls at cultstud.org 

Please note that email registration is an automated process. If you do NOT receive a reply to your email with the relevant information within an hour, please check your spam folder, as some ISPs will treat this automated reply as spam. If the automated VLS message is not in your spam folder, please email mailto:info at cultstud.org for more personal assistance.
 
Upcoming VLS talks (more details TBA):
August — Deborah Rebello Lima (Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil)
September — Rachel Lara van der Merwe (University of Gronigen, Netherlands)
October — Shawna Tang (University of Sydney, Australia)
November — Nomusa Makhubu (University of Cape Town, South Africa)
 
For questions and comments, please contact mailto:info at cultstud.org

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