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- All Subjects: Video games--Social aspects.
- Creators: Linde, Jennifer
Description
In May 2014, The Encyclopedia Show: Chicago performed its last volume. Like all others before, the Show was a collection of performances devised by artists, musicians, poets and playwrights all performing various subtopics surrounding a central theme, taken from “an actual Encyclopedia.” The final show was Volume 56 for Chicago; the founding city ended their six year run with an amassed body of work exploring topics ranging from Wyoming to Alan Turing, Serial Killers to Vice Presidents.
Perhaps more impressive than the monthly performance event in Chicago is the fact that the show has been “franchised” to organizers and performers in at least seventeen cities. Franchise agreements mandated that for at least the first year of performance, topics were to follow Chicago’s schedule, thus creating an archive of Shows around the world, each that started with Bears, moved to The Moon, onto Visible Spectrum of Color, and so on.
Now that the Chicago show has ended, I wonder what will happen to the innovative format for community performance that has reached thousands of audience members and inspired hundreds of individual performances across the globe in a six-year period.
This project, like much of my own work, has two aims: first, to provide the first substantive history of The Encyclopedia Show for archival purposes; and second, to explore whether this format can be used to achieve the goals of “interdisciplinarity” in the classroom. In an effort to honor my own interests in multiple academic disciplines and in an attempt to capture the structural and performative “feel” of an Encyclopedia Show, this dissertation takes the shape of an actual Encyclopedia Show. The overarching topic of this “show” is: Michelle Hill: The Doctoral Process. In an actual Encyclopedia Show, subtopics would work to explore multiple perspectives and narratives encompassed by the central topic. As such, my “subtopics” are devoted to the roles I have played throughout my doctoral process: historian, academic, teacher. A fourth role, performer, works to transition between the sections and further create the feel of a “breakage” from a more traditional dissertation.
Perhaps more impressive than the monthly performance event in Chicago is the fact that the show has been “franchised” to organizers and performers in at least seventeen cities. Franchise agreements mandated that for at least the first year of performance, topics were to follow Chicago’s schedule, thus creating an archive of Shows around the world, each that started with Bears, moved to The Moon, onto Visible Spectrum of Color, and so on.
Now that the Chicago show has ended, I wonder what will happen to the innovative format for community performance that has reached thousands of audience members and inspired hundreds of individual performances across the globe in a six-year period.
This project, like much of my own work, has two aims: first, to provide the first substantive history of The Encyclopedia Show for archival purposes; and second, to explore whether this format can be used to achieve the goals of “interdisciplinarity” in the classroom. In an effort to honor my own interests in multiple academic disciplines and in an attempt to capture the structural and performative “feel” of an Encyclopedia Show, this dissertation takes the shape of an actual Encyclopedia Show. The overarching topic of this “show” is: Michelle Hill: The Doctoral Process. In an actual Encyclopedia Show, subtopics would work to explore multiple perspectives and narratives encompassed by the central topic. As such, my “subtopics” are devoted to the roles I have played throughout my doctoral process: historian, academic, teacher. A fourth role, performer, works to transition between the sections and further create the feel of a “breakage” from a more traditional dissertation.
ContributorsHill, Michelle (Author) / Etheridge Woodson, Stephani (Thesis advisor) / Linde, Jennifer (Committee member) / Early, Jessica (Committee member) / Underiner, Tamara (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
This study utilizes semiotic phenomenology as a method of inquiry to describe the lived experiences of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ) gamers (gaymers). I begin by discussing my issues with the current gaming literature, arguing that the gamer community is a space that privileges cis, heterosexual, and hypermasculine men while oppressing those who may not fit this mold. I discuss the shortcomings of the current literature that attempts to critically look at race and gaming, noting that race in the gaming community is still portrayed as secondary. I focus special attention to how this space allows for more inclusion than the larger gamer and LGBTQ communities while also critiquing those whom this space privileges. Through interviews of members of the local gaymer organization, the Phoenix Gaymers, I discuss ways in which the gaymer community is more inclusive and conscious of others but still follows forms of what I describe to be gaymer privilege. I focus on gaymer privilege within the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality, where I argue from the phenomenological descriptions, reductions, and interpretations that there are still overt issues of sexism and transphobia as well as implicit issues of white privilege. While I describe the issues that are found within the Phoenix Gaymers, I also attempt to provide suggestions for change within the organization as well as in academic scholarship to create more awareness and inclusion for female, transgender, genderqueer, and queer people of color gaymers.
ContributorsOmori, Jeremy Michael (Author) / Sandlin, Jennifer (Thesis advisor) / Martinez, Jacqueline M (Committee member) / Pérez, Kimberlee (Committee member) / Linde, Jennifer (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017