Call for Papers: Utopia on the Tabletop (2021)

Utopia on the Tabletop: CfP “Quite the contrary, Skepticus. I believe that Utopia is intelligible, and I believe that game playing is what makes Utopia intelligible.” — Bernard Suits, ​The Grasshopper: Games, Play, and Utopia We invite abstracts of ​200-500 words on the theme of ​tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) and the utopian. Please also include a ​50-300 word bio (or alternatively a CV or a link to your website). Send abstracts to ​[email protected] by 1 February 2021 with “Submission” in the subject line. Informal queries in advance are also welcome. Chapters of 2,000-8,000 words will be due 1 September 2021. All submissions should in some way touch on the theme of the utopian in relation to TTRPGs, but this may be interpreted flexibly. Themes and perspectives may include, for example, hopepunk, solarpunk, and other -punks, transformative justice and anti-carceral feminism, queer publics and queer world-making, colonialism and decoloniality, Afrofuturism and Indigenous Futurisms, climate change and ecological crisis, critical humanism and posthumanism, dystopia and heterotopia, imaginary voyages and philosophical novels, counter-mapping and radical cartography, performance and performativity, revolt and revolution, post-work and anti-work, post-scarcity, degrowth and post-growth, paranoid and reparative reading, architecture and infrastructure, left-accelerationism and techno-utopianism, critical design, actual play and live-streaming, critical play, serious and applied games, play therapy, game design and playtesting, political activism and organizing, participatory democracy, de-anthropic play, de-anthropic utopianism, intentional communities, governing the commons, speculative economics, aleatoric writing and procedural generation, gamification, AI, Quantified Self, ambient computing and SHINE, Mixed Reality, and other digital technologies. We welcome all approaches, e.g. close analysis of a single TTRPG; comparative analysis of several TTRPGs; proposals engaging with design philosophies or other conversations that have played out over blogs, Discord, and other social media; proposals for introductory overviews of a relevant phenomenon; exploration of broader TTRPG cultures (e.g. streams and podcasts, zines); proposals focused on a particular designer, press, mechanic, norm, subculture, movement, hashtag, etc. We especially welcome submissions that will shine a light on work by BIPOC game designers, writers, and creators. Submissions will be considered for an innovative open-access edited collection, ​Utopia on the Tabletop​, which will include original mini-TTRPGs on utopian themes alongside scholarship. If you are a game designer and would like to be kept up-to-date about the game design aspect of the collection, contact ​[email protected]​. Suggestions of games and genres to explore include: ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● Serious games, applied games, Games for Change Lyric RPGs SWORD DREAM The Quiet Year a​ nd​ The Deep Forest Dream Askew a​ nd​ Dream Apart Flotsam: Adrift Among the Stars Wanderhome Other Belonging Outside Belonging games Microscope Shock: Social Science Fiction ​and​ Human Contact Other worldbuilding-focused games MoonPunk Brinkwood: ​The Blood of Tyrants The Glass Dream Game Consensus | Together #Feminism: A Nanogame Anthology Bluebeard’s Bride Dogs in the Vineyard Freemarket Mars Colony Urban Shadows Orun Archipelago Steelweaver’s Rebellion The Treasure At The End Of This Dungeon Is An Escape From This Dungeon And We Will Never Escape From This Dungeon The Riot Starts Songs for the Dusk Balikbayun: Returning Home Return to the Stars Dialect Legacy: Life Among the Ruins Affection Game Told by Starlight Rosette Diceless Troika! Our Queen Crumbles Anti-utopian RPGs such as P ​ aranoia​ and ​Herland War gaming, game-like futures tools ARGs and LARPing Fictional TTRPGs Feel free to propose discussions of fragments of games, works-in-progress, ashcan editions, early access editions, etc. For example, ​Time of Tribes​, ​PbtA Debt​, ​Traverser​, S​ olarpunk​. Relevant theorists and secondary texts may include: ● Bernard Suits, ​The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia ● Mary Flanagan, C ​ ritical Play ● Ruth Levitas, U ​ topia as Method ● adrienne maree brown, P ​ leasure Activism ● Alex Zamalin, ​Black Utopia: The History of an Idea from Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism ● Bonnie Ruberg and Adrienne Shaw (eds.), ​Queer Game Studies ● Felwine Sarr, A ​ frotopia ● Ashis Nandy, T ​ raditions, Tyranny, and Utopias: Essays in the Politics of Awareness ● Ralph Pordzik, T ​ he Quest for Postcolonial Utopia ● Kathi Weeks, T ​ he Problem with Work ● José Esteban Munoz, C ​ ruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity ● C. Thi Nguyen, ​Games: Agency as Art ● Dunne & Raby, ​Critical Design ● Rosi Braidotti, P ​ ost-Humanism ● Jane McGonigal, R ​ eality is Broken ● David Graeber, F ​ ragments of an Anarchist Anthropology ​and U ​ topia of Rules ● Nicholas J. Mizer, T ​ abletop Role-Playing Games and the Experience of Imagined Worlds ● Ashley M. L. Brown, ​Sexuality in Role-Playing Games ● Edward K. Chan, T ​ he Racial Horizon of Utopia: Unthinking the future of race in late twentieth-century American utopian novels ● Caroline Edwards, ​Utopia and the Contemporary British Novel ● Paul Booth, B ​ oard Games as Media ● Sebastian Deterding, Jose Zagal, R ​ oleplaying Game Studies: Transmedia Foundations ● Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer, T ​ heory for the World to Come ● Anton Nijholt (ed.), ​Playable Cities ● Caroline Bassett, Sarah Kember, Kate O’Riordan, ​Furious: Technological Feminism and Digital Futures ● Bonnie Ruberg, ​Video Games Have Always Been Queer ● Kari Schonpflug, ​Feminism, Economics, and Utopia ● Alexandra Brodsky, Rachel Kauder Nalebuff (ed.), ​The Feminist Utopia Project: Fifty-Seven Visions of a Wildly Better Future ● Paul Youngquist, A ​ Pure Solar World: Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism ● Kai Masser, Linda Mory, T ​ he Gamification of Citizens' Participation in Policymaking ● Jose Sanchez​, A ​ rchitecture for the Commons: Participatory Systems in the Age of Platforms ● Saklofske​, ​Arbuckle​, and​ Bath​, F ​ eminist War Games?: Mechanisms of War, Feminist Values, and Interventional Games ● Sarah Lynn Bowman,​ The Functions of Role-Playing Games ● Jennifer Grouling Cover, ​The Creation of Narrative in Tabletop Roleplaying Games ● Adriana de Souza e Silva​, ​Ragan Glover-Rijkse​, ​Hybrid Play: Crossing Boundaries in Game Design, Players Identities and Play Spaces ● S. D. Chrostowska and James D. Ingram (eds.), P ​ olitical Uses of Utopia: New Marxist, Anarchist, and Radical Democratic Approaches ● James Gustave Speth​, ​Kathleen Courrier​ (eds), T ​ he New Systems Reader ● Torill Elvira Mortensen​, ​Kristine Jørgensen​, ​The Paradox of Transgression in Games ● João M. Paraskeva​, ​Curriculum and the Generation of Utopia ● Dale Leorke, Marcus Owens (eds), G ​ ames and Play in the Creative, Smart, and Ecological City ● Caitriona Dhuill​, ​Sex in Imagined Spaces: Gender and Utopia from More to Bloch ● Michael Gardiner, Julian Jason Haladyn (eds), ​Boredom Studies Reader ● Philip Abbott, ‘Utopians at Play’ ● Jeffrey Sens, ‘Queer Worldmaking Games: A Portland Indie Experiment’ ● Special issue of ​Sports, Ethics, and Philosophy: ​Bernard Suits’ Legacy: New Inspirations and Interpretations ● Elinor Ostrom, Erik Olin Wright, Ernst Bloch, Darko Suvin, Raymond Williams, Tom Moylan, Krishnan Kumar, Lucy Sargisson, Fredric Jameson, Lyman Tower Sargeant, Ruth Levitas, Carl Freedman, Seo-Young Chu, Ytasha L. Womack, Lisa Yaszek, Sherryl Vint, N. Katherine Hayles, Donna Haraway, Farah Mendlesohn, Marleen Barr, Caroline Edwards, Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, Samuel R. Delany, Adam Roberts, ​China Miéville ● Decolonising Utopia Resource List: ​utopia.ac/resources/decolonisation/