Year: 2024, 2024
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Abstract: <p>Games immerse players. Through immersion, players can see themselves embodied in their avatars. There is space for meaningful experimentation of gender through these avatars as embodied players can blur the lines between their real-life and virtual selves. The player's avatar becomes that person — in terms of personality, feelings, and gender identity/expression. In virtual reality… more Year: 2023, 2023
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Abstract: <p>Games, and especially video games are fast becoming the most pervasive media form, and live streaming games is fast becoming the most pervasive way of experiencing those games. This thesis looks at the history of broadcast, the practices of technological hobbyists, the social and technological aspect of games, gaming communities that transform game narratives, and gaming communities that… more Year: 2022, 2022
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Name(s): Creator (cre): van Vliet, Elizabeth, Thesis advisor (ths): Epp, Michael, Thesis advisor (ths): Synenko, Joshua, Degree committee member (dgc): Epp, Michael, Degree committee member (dgc): Synenko, Joshua, Degree committee member (dgc): Pendleton-Jiménez, Karleen, Degree committee member (dgc): Mitchell, Liam, Degree granting institution (dgg): Trent University Abstract: <p>This thesis examines the ways in which body image is discussed in online settings. There are three different communities discussed: body positivity, proED (pro-eating disorder), and body neutrality. Both body positivity and proED content are fairly popular online, and both have found significant support and followers on various social medias. In this thesis, I argue that both of these… more Year: 2022, 2022
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Abstract: <p>The purpose of this research is to highlight the limitations and opportunities for playful expression of gender identity in character creation systems of virtual worlds, and how these might work to reinforce, or disrupt, the heteronormative imperative. The primary sites considered in this analysis are the video game World of Warcraft and the live action role-playing game Amtgard. I… more Year: 2019, 2019
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Abstract: <p>The central scholarly contribution of this dissertation develops through bringing the theories of Michel Foucault to bear in a sociolegal study of rave culture's criminalization by the United Kingdom's 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act. My methodology develops rave as a cultural keyword. This keyword navigates through a quasi-materialist definition of rave as a… more Year: 2019, 2019
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Abstract: <p>This thesis elucidates the role of play and games—the ludic—in Julio Cortázar's novel Hopscotch (1966; translation of Rayuela, 1963) through a range of resonant theories. Literary gameplay dominates the formal, linguistic, affective, reflexive, and thematic dimensions of Hopscotch, which are analyzed through concepts borrowed from play theorist Roger Caillois, among others, and… more Year: 2019, 2019
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Abstract: <p>The study sought to uncover the motivations influencing collectors when they buy recorded music. These motivations were analyzed through the lenses of environmental, economic, and cultural sustainability. Trent Radio Programmers were interviewed because of their frequent use of recorded music, sizable collections, and active participation in the local music scene. The study identified… more Year: 2018, 2018
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Abstract: <p>This thesis explores the seemingly innocuous call to "grow up," which is never simply a biological imperative. It is also a moral one. Demanding that one should "grow up" is not demanding that one grow older, but that one transform into a specific kind of subject – the "grown up." In the reading advanced here, The Little Prince thermalizes the suppleness of… more Year: 2017, 2017
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Abstract: <p>The end of the Cold War and the global triumph of neoliberalism were accompanied by the evolution of certain themes in dystopian fiction. According to some of its advocates, such as Francis Fukuyama, neoliberalism's success signified the "end of history," understood as ideological evolution, since the decline of communism left Western liberal democracies without any major… more Year: 2015, 2015
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Abstract: <p>This thesis studies a subset of players of video games called "power-gamers" who play games in a way that mirrors labour as opposed to leisure. Through ethnographic fieldwork and exploration this thesis examines what constitutes "power-gaming" and seeks to unpack the differences between skill, fun, and labour. Chapter One analyzes how ethnographic fieldwork is… more Year: 2015, 2015
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Abstract: <p>New conditions of materiality are emerging from fundamental changes in our ontological order. Digital subjectivity represents an emergent mode of subjectivity that is the effect of a more profound ontological drift that has taken place, and this bears significant repercussions for the practice and understanding of the political. This thesis pivots around mathematician Grigori '… more Year: 2015, 2015
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Abstract: <p>On Tilt: The Inheritance and Inheritors of Digital Games accepts and extends Eric Zimmerman's contention that literacies currently being developed during video-game play will be more broadly applicable (outside games) in the next hundred years as Western work, education, entertainment, and citizenship spaces become ever more shaped like video games. </p><p> To the end of… more Year: 2015, 2015
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Abstract: <p>This thesis is a critical response to Evgeny Morozov's article proclaiming the death of the cyberflâneur. Suspicious of the superficiality of his argument, I developed a practico-theoretical project to prove that the cyberflâneur is not dead but alive – or, if it were dead, to rescue it from its grave and bring it back to life. In the course of my response to Morozov, I develop a… more Year: 2015, 2015
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Abstract: <p>This thesis explores the rhetoric of theft imposed on online music by comparing file</p><p>sharing to shoplifting. Since the litigation between the music industry and Napster, file sharing has been perceived, both by the entertainment industry and by a music listening public, as a criminal act. However, file sharing has more in common with home taping and music archives than… more Year: 2015, 2015
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Abstract: <p>Game texts present unique and dynamic opportunities for lability: how readers can make choices while reading that alter the narrative's nature or outcome. Labile decisions are neither simply correct nor incorrect--the reader renders judgement to produce a desired outcome. When encountering labile challenges, players employ an interpretive strategy to resolve them. Many game texts… more Year: 2014, 2014
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Abstract: <p>This dissertation traces the concept of transcendentalism from Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781) to Michel Foucault's historical a priori and Pierre Bourdieu's field and habitus, with implicit reference to Deleuze's `transcendental empiricism,' and the influence this trajectory has had on contemporary theory and culture. This general conceptual framework is… more Year: 2014, 2014
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Abstract: <p>This thesis is a theoretical study of Facebook's surveillance project. It begins by taking one of the predominant organizational forms of modern surveillance, Foucaultian panopticism, and examining the ways in which its form, along with Foucault's broader model of the disciplinary society, is realized, remixed and extended by Facebook's virtual form. Following this… more Year: 2013, 2013
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Name(s): Creator (cre): Deshane, Evelyn, Thesis advisor (ths): Eddy, Charmaine, Degree committee member (dgc): Chivers, Sally, Degree committee member (dgc): McGuire, Kelly, Degree committee member (dgc): Mitchell, Liam, Degree granting institution (dgg): Trent University Abstract: <p>This thesis examines what the term "transgender narrative" represents at this particular time and location. I do this by examining various methods of transgender storytelling through different forms of media production, including autobiography, film, novels, and online platforms such as Tumblr and YouTube. In chapter one, I look at the production of novels and the value system… more
