Revolutions: Material Forms, Mobile Futures
Monday Night Lecture Series | Spring 2020

Intersectional Tech: Black Praxis in Digital Gaming

Kishonna Gray • University of Illinois, Chicago

March 30 @ 6 P.M.
Zoom Conference: https://wesleyan.zoom.us/j/334285853

While public discussions around gaming culture focus on the toxic elements, there are thriving groups utilizing online environments and their related tools to sustain their communities. While trolls and other toxic actors (and resistance practices) may dominate the conversation, we must begin to center the communities that marginalized bodies create and sustain despite the toxicity. For example, a cohort of lesbians highlight that Xbox Live and Twitter have become spaces where they can explore their marginalized identities and build a community with others like them. Black Twitchers, while experiencing racism and harassment, also express that they are able to create networks of Black gamers, streamers, and others demonstrating the innovativeness of Black digital practices in gaming contexts employing podcasts, YouTube, and other social media sites (Gray, 2016). As such, the purpose of this presentation is to explore these hybrid communities as intersectional counterpublics focused on creating and connecting communities to foster identity development in both physical and digital contexts.

Revolutions: Material Forms, Mobile Futures
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