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: 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: 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: 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
