Guest seminar: Jason Hawreliak

Information about the seminar: In this seminar, I present the early stages of a project which aims to provide a theoretical framework for analyzing the meaning of movement in videogames. The project draws from, and builds on, two existing analytical models: multimodality, which examines how individual semiotic modes work together to create meaning, and kinesemiotics, a method for analyzing movement developed by project collaborator Arianna Mairoani (Loughborough University). The current focus of the project looks at how gender norms are coded through movement in games and other digital media. What does it mean to move in a “masculine” or “feminine” way, and how might dominant conceptions of gender manifest themselves in game animations? The seminar begins by providing an overview of the theoretical underpinnings of the project, and then applies the theoretical model to two videogames: Street Fighter V, a popular fighting game, and Fortnite, one of the most widely played games in the world. The seminar concludes with a discussion of how our theoretical model might be applied to other genres and media.

Bio: Jason Hawreliak is an Associate Professor of Game Studies and the Graduate Program Director of the MA in Game Studies program at Brock University in Ontario, Canada. His research looks at meaning in videogames, with a particular focus on multimodality. He is the author of Multimodal Semiotics and Rhetoric in Videogames (Routledge, 2018), and a co-founder of the online Game Studies periodical, First Person Scholar.    

Photo: 'Aurora - Connecting Senses’, Cristina Pop-Tiron & Signe Kjær Jensen