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&id=caaf5790a7> 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