July 2025 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

NEXT FRIDAY July 18 @ 1PM // ROMchip Presents: Carly Kocurek on "Dolly Ludens: American Girl Dolls Playing Games"
by Laine Nooney 09 Jul '25

09 Jul '25

Join us Friday, July 18, as *ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories <https://romchip.org/index.php/romchip-journal> *hosts cultural historian Carly A. Kocurek for a talk titled "Dolly Ludens: American Girl Dolls Playing Games*."* The event will be at 1PM ET on the ROMchip Twitch channel <https://www.twitch.tv/romchipjournal>. Sign up for our newsletter <https://romchip.us13.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=27c1594af9abf2dc80455091b&…> to never miss an update. These tickets serve as calendar reminders for the event. Head to https://www.twitch.tv/romchipjournal join the talk on July 18. *About the Talk* When American Girl launched their totally 1980s historical character Courtney Moore, fans and critics alike fixated on the doll's flashiest accessory: A doll-sized Pac-Man arcade cabinet. To some, the integration of video games into a doll line that often frames itself as a producer of modern heirlooms seemed a departure from the brand's well-established ethos. But, ever since Pleasant Company first launched the American Girl doll brand in 1986, the historical characters have come with their own doll-sized games, signaling clear ideas about how girls--both today and in the past--should spend their time. Join video game historian Carly A. Kocurek for a discussion of American Girl's history of doll playthings and what they tell us about how historical girlhood and girl's play is recrafted for contemporary consumers. *About the Speaker* Carly A. Kocurek is a cultural historian specializing in the study of new media technologies and video gaming whose research has been funded by the National Science Foundation. She is the author of two books, *Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade* <https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816691838/coin-operated-americans/> (Minnesota, 2015); and *Brenda Laurel: Pioneering Games for Girls* <https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/brenda-laurel-9781501319778/> (Bloomsbury, 2017); co-author of *Ultima and World-Building in the Computer Role-Playing Game* <https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/vh53wz85d> (Amherst, 2024); and co-editor of *Historiographies of Game Studies: What it Has Been, What it Could Be* <https://punctumbooks.com/titles/historiographies-of-game-studies/> (Punctum, 2025). Her articles have appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including* Game Studies, The Journal of Popular Culture, Technical Communication Quarterly,* and *Visual Studies,* among others. With Jennifer deWinter, she co-founded and co-edits the Influential Game Designers book series for Bloomsbury. Her games have been exhibited nationally and internationally. Paste Magazine called her game Choice: Texas “one of the best games of 2014.” She has won awards from the Golden Cobra Challenge and Indiecade Climate Jam and successfully crowdfunded multiple games and creative projects, including the solo tabletop role-playing game Golden Mart <https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/golden-mart/golden-mart>. As Professor of Digital Humanities and Media Studies at Illinois Tech, she teaches courses on digital culture, interactive storytelling, game design, and media history. She also works with both undergraduate and graduate students on collaborative research and design projects and founded the gamebIITes annual festival of student games. *About **ROMchip* *ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories <https://www.romchip.org/>* is a free, online scholarly journal for game history. *ROMchip *develops, edits, and publishes ad-free, open access game history research for a range of audiences. It supports any discipline of work enlivening the history of games in local and global contexts, and embraces diversity in how game history is studied, documented, collected, preserved, and practiced. *ROMchip* is a donation-based organization fiscally sponsored by The Hack Foundation <https://hackclub.com/fiscal-sponsorship/> (d.b.a. Hack Club), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit (EIN: 81-2908499). Laine Nooney <http://www.lainenooney.com/> Associate Professor | MCC <http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/mcc/> @ NYU <http://www.nyu.edu/> | they/them Managing Editor | ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories <https://romchip.org/index.php/romchip-journal> | Join our Newsletter <http://eepurl.com/crCul1> -Need to make an appt? Click, don't email: https://calendar.app.google/V9ZuMRWEKnnUBdQ56 -Probably typed by voice recognition, so please cherish typos

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CFP: Hate and NonHuman Listening A Guest Series for Sounding Out!, Submission Deadline: Monday, July 14, 2025, by 11:59pm PDT
by Jennifer Stoever 07 Jul '25

07 Jul '25

Call for Proposals Hate and NonHuman Listening *A Guest Series for *Sounding Out! *guest edited by Kathryn Huether*Submission Deadline: Monday, July 14, 2025, by 11:59pm PDT Please send a proposed title and 300–350 word abstract to: kathryn.huether(a)gmail.com Final pieces should be ~1200 words. Four will be selected for publication. We invite submissions for a guest series on Hate and NonHuman Listening, which critically examines how artificial intelligence and algorithmic systems are increasingly tasked with listening to, moderating, and at times amplifying hate—whether through speech, sound, or silence. This series begins with Todd Presner’s *Ethics of the Algorithm <https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691258966/ethics-of-the-alg…>* (2024), which asks what it means to use algorithms ethically. We expand that question to consider how algorithms *listen*—especially when asked to interpret, flag, or police harmful content. What happens when the complexities of human hate, trauma, and protest are processed through systems which were not designed to understand them? And what are the consequences when such systems fail? >From hate speech moderation on social platforms to surveillance technologies deployed under the guise of safety, AI now plays a defining role in deciding which voices are heard, which are silenced, and which are misheard altogether. Dr. Saadia Gabriel <https://saadiagabriel.com/>’s research shows how AI often misflags nonstandard English, AAVE, and protest language as harmful—while overlooking overt hate speech. Similarly, Tonia Sutherland’s *Resurrecting the Black Body <https://www.ucpress.edu/books/resurrecting-the-black-body/paper>* (2023) foregrounds the archival and technological violence that structures digital afterlives, asking how systems listen to (or erase) Black life and death. We invite critical essays (~1200 words) that explore the entanglements of hate and NonHuman listening. Topics might include: The racialized failures of AI speech recognition and hate speech detection - Algorithmic misinterpretation of protest, dissent, or trauma as hate - Deepfake audio, synthetic voices, and AI-generated propaganda - Moderation, erasure, and the sonic politics of platform-based listening - Archival violence and the ethics of algorithmic listening to Holocaust testimony or genocide - How NonHuman listening extends colonial, carceral, and nationalist logics - Creative resistance to algorithmic infrastructures of hate and misrecognition At a time when AI-driven systems structure public discourse—amplifying some voices, silencing others, and often failing to understand the very nature of harm—this series offers a critical space to ask: how is hate being listened to today? And who gets to define it?Please submit a proposed title and abstract (300–350 words) by Monday, July 14, 2025, to kathryn.huether(a)gmail.com. Selected contributors will be notified by the end of July. CFP: Hate and NonHuman Listening, Due 14 July 2025 <https://soundstudiesblog.com/cfp-hate-and-nonhuman-listening-due-mon-july-1…> -- Dr. Jennifer Lynn Stoever (hear name <https://namedrop.io/jenniferstoever>) Pronouns: She/her/hers Author of The Sonic Color Line <http://nyupress.org/books/9781479889341/> (NYU Press, 2016) Associate Professor of English State University of New York at Binghamton Located on the unceded land and water of the Onoñda'gegá' (Onondaga) People Zoom Office: https://binghamton.zoom.us/my/profjstoever Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder *Sounding Out!: The Sound Studies Blog* *soundstudiesblog.com <http://www.soundstudiesblog.com/>* https://twitter.com/soundingoutblog Email: jstoever(a)binghamton.edu **Please note: I am off work email from* *Friday 6 PM to Monday 8 AM. Thank you for your patience! **I know that my working hours may not be yours, so please don't feel obligated to respond to--or even think about--my email outside of your normal work hours.*

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Recommendation for real-world assignment // Working with Wiki Education
by Jennifer Stoever 07 Jul '25

07 Jul '25

Dear all, I wanted to share with everyone a high-impact teaching opportunity that has added a lot to my own classroom – the Wikipedia assignment <https://youtu.be/5169hRHZqIk?feature=shared>. Through the Wikipedia assignment, my students develop their research, writing, and digital media literacy skills, and they get a real-world, hands-on experience that makes an impact on knowledge equity. Many faculty also find that students are often incredibly motivated when they realize their work on Wikipedia could be viewed thousands or even millions of times. I have had great success and enjoyment from working on a Wikipedia assignment with my students (see "How a Classroom Assignment Can Help Improve Wikipedia <https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/5592/open-source-how-a-classroom-assi…>" to check it out) To help faculty incorporate Wikipedia assignments into their courses, the nonprofit Wiki Education provides customizable assignment plans, student training modules, staff support, and digital tools that track student work throughout the assignment – all free of charge. I encourage you to explore how to get started on their website <https://wikiedu.org/teach-with-wikipedia/> or connect directly with Wiki Education’s Andrés Vera (Andres(a)wikiedu.org) with questions. Just a heads up that the priority consideration deadline for Fall 2025 is August 10. Sincerely, Jennifer PS. Quick note: The program is open to postsecondary faculty in the U.S. and Canada. For support outside of this region, contact education(a)wikimedia.org. -- Dr. Jennifer Lynn Stoever (hear name <https://namedrop.io/jenniferstoever>) Pronouns: She/her/hers Author of The Sonic Color Line <http://nyupress.org/books/9781479889341/> (NYU Press, 2016) Associate Professor of English State University of New York at Binghamton Located on the unceded land and water of the Onoñda'gegá' (Onondaga) People Zoom Office: https://binghamton.zoom.us/my/profjstoever Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder *Sounding Out!: The Sound Studies Blog* *soundstudiesblog.com <http://www.soundstudiesblog.com/>* https://twitter.com/soundingoutblog Email: jstoever(a)binghamton.edu **Please note: I am off work email from* *Friday 6 PM to Monday 8 AM. Thank you for your patience! **I know that my working hours may not be yours, so please don't feel obligated to respond to--or even think about--my email outside of your normal work hours.*

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SIGCIS 2025 (Online conference) CFP: deadline extended - July 14, 2025
by Ekaterina Babintseva 02 Jul '25

02 Jul '25

Dear SIGCIS Community, The deadline for our Call for Participation for the 16th Annual Conference of the Special Interest Group for Computing, Information, and Society (September 25-27, 2025) has been extended to July 14, 2025. We would like to emphasize that in line with the SIGCIS tradition of opting for a virtual format every other year to increase the conference accessibility, this year's meeting will be held entirely online. The theme of this year's meeting is "Power Surge,"<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1plGw7dI_bUWUxNW295A0IrdeBMggoZ-qRI2hPAK…> and we are delighted to announce Lily Geismer (Claremont McKenna College) as our keynote speaker. Proposals for papers, panels, graduate student WIP papers (new this year!), or other forms of participation are due July 14 (11:59pm AoE) at https://forms.gle/R63W9xYzAepkCwB98<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfHHJCRPIpIYQxCRHsK36NadIe57Lu7lTu…>. See below or follow this link<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1plGw7dI_bUWUxNW295A0IrdeBMggoZ-qRI2hPAK…> for the full CFP. Please reach out if you have any questions, and please spread the word! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SIGCIS 2025: Power Surge September 25-27 2025 | Online via Zoom The Special Interest Group for Computing, Information, and Society (SIGCIS) welcomes submissions to their 16th Annual Conference meetings.sigcis.org<https://meetings.sigcis.org/> Proposal Due Date: July 14 30, 2025 | Submit Here<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfHHJCRPIpIYQxCRHsK36NadIe57Lu7lTu…> Keynote Speaker Lily Geismer<https://www.cmc.edu/academic/faculty/profile/lily-geismer> Professor of History, Claremont McKenna College Call for Participation: >From the rapid uptake of commercial AI tools in the workplace to the increasingly dominant role the tech industry is playing in politics, the combustible confluence of technology, power, money, and politics is moving fast and things are breaking. Scholars and practitioners know to be wary of cycles of hype and fear around new technologies. But to many, what’s happening today feels like a definitive break from the past, akin to an unexpected power spike that exceeds the normal operating voltage of a circuit. For SIGCIS 2025, we ask: What are the stakes of studying the history of computing at a time when technology's perceived excesses are unraveling political institutions, legal doctrines, and professional norms? When technology works as intended for some and "glitches" for others (Benjamin 2019), when political agency is superseded by the technologists' visions of autonomy (Marx 2010), and when labor is devalued in the name of machine productivity (Bix 2000), we assert that locating this moment within the longer history of computing can help us grapple with the contemporary politics of power. The 16th annual conference of the Special Interest Group for Computing, Information, and Society (SIGCIS) employs a broad definition of the history of the politics of computing to facilitate a timely discussion of the relationship between political power and digital technologies. What role does the tech industry play in engineering political, cultural, and economic orders? How do the changes in systems of government funding and patronage steer the goals, tasks, and values of professional and research communities in computer science and engineering? How do political and economic ideologies create demand for certain technologies and shape their adoption? Whether one sees this moment as a breaking point or as a fundamental continuity, this year's theme "Power Surge" also connotes the potential for resistance and response to excesses of computing’s technologies, institutions, corporate actors, and legal doctrines. What modes of effective push-back does the history of computing present to us? "SIGCIS 2025: Power Surge" invites scholars, museum and archive professionals, journalists, IT practitioners, artists, and independent researchers across the disciplinary spectrum to consider how the history of computing and information technology can offer fresh perspectives on tech policy and regulation, the institutional contexts in which computing technology is developed and deployed, and how computing technologies mediate the politics of everyday life. SIGCIS is welcoming of new directions in scholarship. We are particularly interested in submissions that bridge and engage with adjacent but often siloed fields that center the study of power, politics, and policy such as American Political Development (APD), global political economy, political theory, technology policy, and related fields; as well as broader analyses from the histories of technology, computing, information, and science; science and technology studies; oral history and archival studies; critical studies of big data and machine learning; studies of women, gender, and sexuality; studies of race, ethnicity, and postcoloniality; film, media, and game studies; software and code studies; network and internet histories; music, sound studies, and art history; or other adjacent domains. We maintain an inclusive atmosphere for scholarly inquiry supporting disciplinary interventions from beyond the traditional history of technology and promoting diversity in STEM. Submission Format and Procedures: SIGCIS welcomes proposals for individual 15-minute papers, 3-4 paper panel proposals, and non-traditional proposals such as roundtables, software demonstrations, art and music performances, hands-on workshops, etc. Participants are limited to one presenting role, but may take on additional roles as moderator, discussant, graduate student workshop mentor, or similar. NEW THIS YEAR: WIP Workshops for graduate students! In addition to the open SIGCIS program, we invite graduate students to submit an abstract, following the submission guidelines below, for a closed works-in-progress (WIP) workshop, where accepted participants will receive feedback on their drafts from established scholars in the history of computing and adjacent fields. Workshops will take place on Saturday, September 27, the final day of the conference. Students who are accepted to the WIP Workshop must submit a full or excerpted draft of their paper/chapter (4000-8000 words, excluding references) by August 31, 2025 in order to be included in the final program. Drafts will be circulated to mentors in the weeks before the conference. We also invite mentor nominations (including self-nominations), and graduate students submitting WIP papers are especially encouraged to submit nominations. Submissions are due July 14, 2025 here: https://forms.gle/R63W9xYzAepkCwB98<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfHHJCRPIpIYQxCRHsK36NadIe57Lu7lTu…>. Submissions must include: * An anonymized 300-350 word abstract, summary, or prospectus (as appropriate for the submission type). Full panel proposals should additionally include 200-250 word abstracts for each paper that will be part of the panel. If you are proposing a virtual performance, skill share, social activity, or other non-traditional event, please also tell us how much time you anticipate needing. Please do not include names or other identifying information in this file. * A separate file of 100-150 word biographies with full name, affiliation, email, and presentation title for you and each other participant in your submission (if applicable). If you are submitting a co-presented paper, pre-constituted panel, or other submission involving multiple participants, please only have one person submit for the group. Questions about the submission process should be sent to sigcis.conference(a)gmail.com. Virtual Logistics and Accessibility In order to make SIGCIS as accessible as possible within the means of an all-volunteer organization, the SIGCIS Conference Committee has implemented these measures: * SIGCIS is hosted online every other year, starting in 2021. * Virtual SIGCIS conferences are not co-located or co-timed with our parent organization, SHOT, so as not to conflict with SHOT’s in-person conference. * While our typical in-person format is a one-day, 3-stream conference, our virtual format is a multi-day, single stream event with time-zone-sensitive scheduling. * The virtual conference has a sliding-scale registration fee, and membership in SHOT is not required to register. * The submission form includes a field where you can list your time zone(s) and a field where you may make requests for accessibility accommodations. SIGCIS meetings organizing committee Morgan G. Ames<https://morganya.org/>, University of California, Berkeley (SIGCIS Vice-Chair of Meetings) Xiaochang Li<https://comm.stanford.edu/people/xiaochang-li>, Stanford University Ekaterina (Katya) Babintseva<https://www.cla.purdue.edu/directory/profiles/ekaterina-babintseva.html>, Purdue University Gili Vidan<https://infosci.cornell.edu/content/vidan>, Cornell University Colette Perold<https://www.colorado.edu/cmdi/people/media-studies/colette-perold>, University of Colorado, Boulder

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