Adrienne Shaw (born 1983) is an American game studies scholar and Associate Professor at Temple University in the Klein College of Media and Communication.[1] She is known for her work on queer theory and LGBTQ representation in video games. She is the author of Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture, the co-editor of Queer Game Studies, and the founder of the LGBTQ Video Games Archive.
Adrienne Shaw | |
|---|---|
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | University of Pennsylvania Mount Holyoke College |
| Academic work | |
| Institutions | Temple University |
| Main interests | video games, Queer theory, Cultural Studies |
| Notable works | Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture (2014) |
Education
editShaw received her Ph.D. in 2010 from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
Research
editShaw's academic work focuses on gamer identity, the representation of marginalized populations in video games, and how members of marginalized communities understand their relationship to video games. Her work also extends to queerness and technology more broadly.
Her first book, Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 2014) received the 2016 Outstanding Book Award from the Popular Communication Division of the International Communication Association, Warp Zone's 2015 Video Game Librarian Award,[2] and it was listed on the American Library Association's 2016 Rainbow List.[3] Media scholar Adrienne Massanari describes the book as an intervention "against much of the rhetoric of gaming culture that suggests that diversity is good but does little to interrogate why or for whom or in what ways diversity is desirable."[4]
Shaw co-edited, with Bo Ruberg, Queer Game Studies (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), an anthology of essays by academics, journalists, and game designers about queer representation and queer theory in video games. The collection was reviewed favorably by the LA Review of Books and Lambda Literary.[5][6]
Shaw also co-edited, with Katherine Sender, Queer Technologies: Affordances, Affect, Ambivalence (Routledge, 2018) and, with D. Travers Scott, Interventions: Communication Research and Practice (Peter Lang, 2018).
Other work
editShaw is the founder of the LGBTQ Video Game Archive, a publicly available online archive that catalogues LGBTQ representation in video games.[7] As part of her work with the LGBTQ Video Game Archive, Shaw worked with the Internet Archive to resurrect the oldest known example of an LGBTQ video game, C.M. Ralph's Caper in the Castro.[8]
In 2018, Shaw was one of the curators of the Rainbow Arcade exhibit at the Schwules Museum in Berlin, the first exhibit to cover the history of LGBTQ people in video games.[9] USA Today included Rainbow Arcade on its list of best exhibits in Europe for winter 2019.[10]
Controversy
editIn 2014, Shaw was one of the researchers in the Digital Games Research Association singled out for her work on feminism and video games during the Gamergate controversy.[11] As a result of the attention, Shaw and Shira Chess wrote analyses about their experiences in the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media and the Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association.[12][13]
Selected publications
edit- Shaw, A. (2014). Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
- Chess, S. and Adrienne Shaw. (2015). A conspiracy of fishes, or, how we learned to stop worrying about #GamerGate and embrace hegemonic masculinity. Journal of Broadcasting and New Media, 59(1), 208-220. doi:10.1080/08838151.2014.999917
- Shaw, A. (2012). Do you identify as a gamer? Gender, race, sexuality, and gamer identity. New Media & Society, 14(1), 28–44. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444811410394
- Shaw, A. (2010). What Is Video Game Culture? Cultural Studies and Game Studies. Games and Culture, 5(4), 403–424. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412009360414
- Shaw, A. (2009). Putting the Gay in Games: Cultural Production and GLBT Content in Video Games. Games and Culture, 4(3), 228–253. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412009339729
References
edit- ^ "Adrienne Shaw". Klein College of Media and Communication. Retrieved 2022-12-19.
- ^ Staff, Warp Zoned (2016-01-07). "Warp Zoned's 2015 Golden Pixel Awards: Honoring Our Favorite Games From Last Year". Warp Zoned. Retrieved 2019-02-21.
- ^ "2016 over the Rainbow List: 68 LGBT Books for Adult Readers". 19 January 2016.
- ^ Massanari, Adrienne (Fall 2015). "Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture" (PDF). American Journal of Play: 139–141. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-02-27. Retrieved 2019-02-21.
- ^ Degnan, Marcus Tran (3 August 2017). "Gaming Gone Queer". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 2019-02-21.
- ^ Tunney, Alex (2017-06-15). "'Queer Game Studies' Edited by Bonnie Ruberg and Adrienne Shaw". Lambda Literary. Retrieved 2019-02-21.
- ^ Hong, Albert (2016-08-17). "A Temple prof is archiving LGBTQ content in video games from the '80s to now". Technical.ly Philly. Retrieved 2019-02-21.
- ^ Pearson, Jordan; Koebler, Jason (2017-12-20). "You Can Now Play the First LGBTQ Computer Game, For the First Time". Motherboard. Retrieved 2019-02-21.
- ^ Thaddeus-Johns, Josie (2019-01-04). "Sex lives and video games: first exhibition of LGBTQ gaming history opens in Berlin". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-02-21.
- ^ "From Rembrandt to Warhol: The best exhibits at European museums for winter 2019". USA TODAY. Retrieved 2019-02-21.
- ^ "#Gamergate supporters attack Digital Games Research Association". www.insidehighered.com. Retrieved 2019-02-21.
- ^ Chess, Shira; Shaw, Adrienne (2015-01-02). "A Conspiracy of Fishes, or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying About #GamerGate and Embrace Hegemonic Masculinity". Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. 59 (1): 208–220. doi:10.1080/08838151.2014.999917. ISSN 0883-8151. S2CID 145128552.
- ^ Shaw, Adrienne; Chess, Shira (2016-04-05). "We Are All Fishes Now: DiGRA, Feminism, and GamerGate". Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association. 2 (2). doi:10.26503/todigra.v2i2.39. ISSN 2328-9422.