Table Of ContentMore Praise for Cynthia L. Selfe and Gail E. Hawisher
“The best teachers know that writing can never be a self-enclosing practice,
but must remain intimately connected to all media of expression, and thus
constantly open to change. Selfe and Hawisher are the best of the best, and
this book contains a rich harvest, not only of their own thinking, but also of
pathbreaking work by colleagues and students. Anyone who hopes to
understand the complex relationship of literacy and interactive media will
find this book stimulating, challenging, and rewarding.”
—Stuart Moulthrop, Professor of Information Arts and Technologies,
University of Baltimore
“This text will be widely cited, as are all other of the editors’ projects. Part
of their popularity is due to their philosophy of inclusiveness, particularly
assembling new voices. Like James Gee’s work before it, Gaming Lives in the
Twenty-First Century will also bridge a gap to understanding video games,
helping us all recognize the impact of digital media technologies on a range
of literacy practices—alphabetic, cultural, and critical.”
—Kristine Blair, Bowling Green State University
“Gaming Lives in the Twenty-First Century focuses on issues that are not
only timely but also underexplored. The gamers themselves are included as
coauthors and key informants. All too often people write about digital
environments without sufficient access to real contexts and real people. This
collection is unique in its serious inclusion of the people being studied,
especially student-gamers of all ages.”
—Stuart Selber, Penn State University
Previous Publications
Selfe, Cynthia L., & Hawisher, Gail E. (2004). Literate Lives in the Information Age:
Narratives of Literacy from the United States. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Hawisher, Gail E., & Selfe, Cynthia L. (Eds.). (2000). Global Literacies and the
World Wide Web. New York: Routledge.
Hawisher, Gail E., & Selfe, Cynthia L. (Eds.). (1999). Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st
Century Technologies. Logan: Utah State University Press.
Hawisher, Gail E., & Selfe, Cynthia L. (Eds.). (1997). Literacy, Technology, and
Society: Confronting the Issues. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Hawisher, Gail E., LeBlanc, Paul, Moran, Charles, & Selfe, Cynthia L. (1996).
Computers and the Teaching of Writing in American Higher Education, 1979–1994:
A History. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing.
Hawisher, Gail E., & Selfe, Cynthia L. (Eds.). (1991). Evolving Perspectives on
Computers and Composition Studies: Questions for the 1990s. Urbana, IL: NCTE.
Hawisher, Gail E., & Selfe, Cynthia L. (Eds.). (1989). Critical Perspectives on
Computers and Composition Instruction. New York: Columbia University’s
Teachers College Press.
Gaming Lives in the
Twenty-First Century
Literate Connections
Edited by
Cynthia L. Selfe and Gail E. Hawisher
Associate Editor
Derek Van Ittersum
Foreword by
James Paul Gee
GAMING LIVES IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: LITERATE CONNECTIONS
Copyright © Cynthia L. Selfe and Gail E. Hawisher, 2007.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2007 978-1-4039-7219-4
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied
in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2007 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS.
Companies and representatives throughout the world.
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan
®
division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a
registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries.
Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-4039-7220-0 ISBN 978-0-230-60176-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230601765
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gaming lives in the twenty-first century: literate connections / edited by Cynthia L.
Selfe and Gail E. Hawisher; foreword by James Paul Gee.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4039-7220-0
1. Video games—Psychological aspects. 2. Video games—Social aspects.
3. Computer games—Psychological aspects. 4. Computer games—Social aspects.
5. Learning, Psychology of. 6. Visual literacy. I. Selfe, Cynthia L., 1951-II. Hawisher,
Gail E.
GV1469.3.G43 2007
794.8—dc22 2006049826
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Macmillan India Ltd.
First edition: March 2007
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
We dedicate this volume to the graduate students with whom we have worked
over the years—those whose studies are in process and those who have gone on to
new positions in universities across the country. As their teachers, invariably we
are the ones who have learned from them and benefited from our innumerable
conversations and collaborations. We thank them sincerely and wish them our
very best as they continue to contribute their special wisdom to their own
students, to the field, and to their many new colleagues.
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Contents
Foreword ix
James Paul Gee
Introduction: Gaming Lives in the Twenty-First Century 1
Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe
Part I: Gaming and Literacy 19
1 Computer Gaming as Literacy 21
Cynthia L. Selfe, Anne F. Mareck, and Josh Gardiner
2 Transcultural Literacies of Gaming 37
Iswari P. Pandey, Laxman Pandey, and Angish Shreshtha
3 Lost (and Found) in Translation: Game Localization,
Cultural Models, and Critical Literacy 53
Erin Smith and Eve Deitsch
4 Gaming, Identity, and Literacy 71
Daniel Keller with Paul Ardis, Vivienne Dunstan,
Adam Thornton, Rachel Henry, and Brent Witty
Interchapter I: What Some Girls Say about Gaming 88
Part II: The Social Dimensions of Gaming 91
5 Narrative, Action, and Learning: The Stories of Myst 93
Debra Journet
6 Gaming, Agency, and Imagination: Locating Gaming within a
Larger Constellation of Literacies 121
Deanna McGaughey-Summers and Russell Summers
7 Relationship Gaming and Identity: Stephanie and Josh 133
JoAnn Griffin
8 Dungeons, Dragons, and Discretion: A Gateway to Gaming,
Technology, and Literacy 143
Stephanie Owen Fleischer, Susan A. Wright, and Matthew L. Barnes
Interchapter II: What Some 20-Something Players Say about Gaming 161
Part III: Gaming and Difference 165
9 “A Real Effect on the Gameplay”: Computer Gaming, Sexuality,
and Literacy 167
Jonathan Alexander with Mack McCoy and Carlos Velez
viii CONTENTS
10 Taking Flight: Learning Differences Meet Gaming Literacies 191
Matthew Bunce, Marjorie Hebert, and J. Christopher Collins
11 Racing toward Representation: An Understanding of Racial
Representation in Video Games 203
Samantha Blackmon with Daniel J. Terrell
12 Portrait of a Gray Gamer: A Macro-Self Reading the Big Picture 217
John E. Branscum with Frank Quickert
13 Gender Matters: Literacy, Learning, and Gaming in One
American Family 229
Pamela Takayoshi
Interchapter III: What Early Gamers Say about Gaming 250
Afterword: The Return of the Player 253
Dmitri Williams
List of Contributors 261
Index 267
Foreword
James Paul Gee
When I wrote What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy
(2003) I was fairly new to video games, but I had long had an axe to grind about
literacy, learning, and the human mind. Literacy, I had argued in Social Linguistics
and Literacies (1996), is not something that happens primarily in the privacy of
people’s minds; reading and writing are not just mental acts or cognitive achieve-
ments. Rather, literacy is something that happens out in the world of social, cul-
tural, and institutional activities.
People do not just read the Bible, a physics book, a legal document, or an anime
manga1 as words on a page. They read, talk about, and act upon these documents
in distinctive ways for distinctive purposes. You don’t really know how to read
these things if you don’t know something about what people do with them and
what it means to them when they do it. For example, a radical socialist reads a
given legal decision differently than does a conservative legal historian or a cru-
sading lawyer defending an indigent client. Literacy is at home in the world of
talk, action, interaction, and values, not only in people’s heads.
If all you can do when confronted with a written text is plug in something like
dictionary definitions for the words on the page, all you have is a verbal under-
standing of the text. If, on the other hand, you can plug in, not just words for
words, but, rather, images, actions, and dialogue for the words on the page, then
you have what I call a “situated understanding.”
This issue of situated understanding became dramatically clear to me when I
started playing video games. Like a good baby boomer, but not a smart young per-
son, when I played my first game, I initially tried to read the manual cover to
cover. I understood what the manual was saying as words, but I had no idea what
it really meant or how it applied. I felt that I would be unable to play the game,
since it all seemed so unclear. But then I put the manual down and played. After a
few hours of play, I returned to the manual and now what had seemed so unclear
was completely lucid. I even had a hard time recalling why the text had seemed so
hard in the beginning.
Why? Because now I could associate the words on the page with actions,
images, and experiences from the game. After I had played a number of games of
a similar type, I found that my growing genre knowledge—knowledge about how
different types of games work—made such reading even easier. After I had even-
tually participated in gamer dialogue and social practices, I found such reading yet
