Gaming Lives in the Twenty-First Century. Literate Connections

Cynthia L. SELFE et Gail E. HAWISHER, Gaming Lives in the Twenty-First Century. Literate Connections, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, 288 p.

ISBN 1-4039-7220-6

SUMMARY

Gaming Lives explores the complexly rendered relationship between computer gaming environments and literacy development by focusing on in-depth case studies of computer gamers in the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This volume examines the claim that computer games can provide better literacy and learning environments than U.S. schools. Using the words and observations of individual gamers, this book offers historical and cultural analyses of their literacy development, practices, and values.

CONTENTS

Part I: Gaming and Literacy

Computer Gaming as Literacy

Gaming as Literacy: Grow as You Go

Gaming, Class, Culture, and Literacy Learning

Found in Translation: Cultural Literacy, Language Acquisition, and Narrative Comprehension in the Advanced Gamer

Part II: Gaming and Difference

Racing Toward Representation: An Understanding of Racial Representation in Video Games

Taking Flight: Learning Difference Meets Gaming Literacies

Queer Role Playing: Gaming and Sexual LiteracyThe Social Dimensions of Gaming

Gaming and Narrative

Gaming, Agency, and Imagination: Locating Gaming within a Larger Constellation of Literacies Aimed at Rewriting the World

Reading Popular Culture through Video Games: One Gamer’s View of His Learning and Literacy with Video Games

Gaming, Literacy, and Family

Part III: Gaming and Gender

Gaming, Gender, and Literate Practices

Game Playing Girls

Relationship Gaming and Identity: Stephanie and Josh

Text-Based Gaming

Part IV: Gaming Across Time

Caucus Race: Three Generations Think About Books, Games, and Lewis Carroll

Dungeons, Dragons, and Discretion: A Gateway to Gaming, Technology, and Literacy

Gaming and Spirituality

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Cynthia L. Selfe is Humanities Distinguished Professor in the English Department at The Ohio State University.

Gail E. Hawisher is University Distinguished Teacher/Scholar and Founding Director of the Center for Writing Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.