One of the many things that makes me super excited to begin my new job as a postdoc at USC’s Interactive Media and Games Division is the chance to design and teach a new upper-level course that focuses on critical game analysis. The course I’ll be teaching for the first time this fall is called “Gender and Sexuality in Video Games.” Here’s the description:
Feminism and queer representation have taken center stage in recent debates around the future of video games. However, gender, sexuality, and identity have long been important to how we experience games and to games themselves. In this course, students will learn about gender and sexuality in video games, game communities, the games industry, and their own media-making practices. Through a combination of creative group projects and analytical writing, students will develop the vocabulary to think critically and speak powerfully about the cultural dimensions of the interactive media they both consume and create.
Topics covered in course will include: representations of women and sexual identity from across the history of video games; issues of gender and sexuality in video-game communities; sexism and homophobia in games and the game industry with an emphasis on progress and social justice; feminist and queer theory as tools for analyzing games; intersectional connections in games between gender, sexuality, race, class, and disability; queerness and gender-inclusivity as game design principles; critical self-reflection and community engagement through games.
