Ziegler Lecture: Evan Torner, “Decolonizing Games and Games for Decolonization”


DATE
Friday March 22, 2024
TIME
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM

Join us on March 22nd for a CENES Ziegler Lecture featuring Evan Torner (University of Cincinnati).

Title: “Decolonizing Games and Games for Decolonization”

Abstract: In this talk, Evan Torner will speak of the intersection of board games and decolonization initiatives and his recent course on decolonizing board game cultures. Applying the fundamentals of decolonial theory to critique board games as a medium, he will discuss past design strategies of addressing colonial logics in board games, and lay the groundwork for future decolonial board game design.

Bio: Evan Torner is Associate Professor of German Studies and Film / Media Studies; Undergraduate Director of German Studies; Director, UC Game Lab. He defended his dissertation on race representation in East German genre cinema at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2013, and spent 2013-2014 at Grinnell College as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow. He has published several articles pertaining to East Germany, critical race theory, DEFA Indianerfilme, science-fiction, transnational genre cinema, and game studies, as well as co-edited several books. His volume Immersive Gameplay: Essays on Role-Playing and Participatory Media co-edited with William J. White was published with McFarland Publishing in 2012, and he is one of the founding editors of the Analog Game Studies journal. His major projects underway include the Handbook of East German Cinema: The DEFA Legacy, co-edited with Henning Wrage and under contract with Walter De Gruyter, and a monograph entitled A Century and Beyond: Critical Readings of German Science-Fiction Cinema.

How to Attend:

This meeting will be a hybrid format. Join us online or in Buchanan Tower room 1099 at 1:00pm.