Digital Commons Network^™

Why The Undead Arcade?, Carly A. Kocurek, Samuel Tobin

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In 2009, Stride Gum launched a campaign to “Save the Arcades,” offering $25,000 to an arcade on the brink of closure through a convoluted contest. Arcade fans could play a retro reboot game on the campaign’s site, then assign points to one of the four arcades deemed eligible for the competition. In the rhetoric of the campaign, arcades are an endangered species, each arcade an outpost of something precious and threatened. Much of contemporary gaming culture revels in a nostalgic pull for so-called classic arcades, and players’ desire to validate through remembrances of games past helps drive and …

The Midway In The Museum: Arcades, Art, And The Challenge Of Displaying Play, Jennifer Dewinter

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Arcade games are increasingly being presented in museum spaces for both contemplation and play. By placing arcades into the museum, curators are creating narratives about the history of games, about the cultural value of these artifacts, and increasingly, about the artistic merit of computer games. However, when arcades enter the museum space, a tension arises between the critical distance demanded by museums—a distance needed to contemplate the curatorial vision of an object—and the closeness and irreverence demanded by play. To this tension, I argue museum spaces bring together these contemporary objects as part of a discourse concerning a postmodern anxiety …

Innovation, Imitation, And The Continued Importance Of Vintage Video Games, Brendan Gaughen

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

“Innovation, Imitation, and the Continued Importance of Video Games” frames the development of the video game industry as one defined by a dialectic of innovation and imitation between arcades and home gaming. These complexities are simplified if not completely overlooked in the numerous game compilations, emulator collections, and plug and play devices, all of which have an effect on the nostalgia of players. The industry experimented with innovations in graphics and immersive gameplay throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, at which point compilations of classic video games (generally speaking, pre-1983) started being released for home consoles and in arcades. The …

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The Veteran Gamer: The Canonization And Commodification Of Nostalgia In Anamanaguchi's 8-Bit Video Game Soundtrack, Megan Mckittrick

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

While there are many contemporary 8-bit-inspired video game scores, the article points to the original soundtrack for the 2010 Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World: The Game (Ubisoft, 2010) as an example of game music canon formation, arguing that Anamanaguchi designs their music to hail gamers who share their sense of nostalgia, referred to as veteran, aging, or mature gamers. Anamanaguchi not only canonizes 8-bit music by hailing veteran gamers; they commodify it, as well. Recognizing the market for this style of music, they employ what Christina Baade and Paul Aitken have described as the nostalgia aesthetic to sell their music …

After Life History: An Interview With Raiford Guins On His "Game After: A Cultural Study Of Video Game Afterlife", Samuel Tobin

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Raiford Guins is a professor of culture and technology in the Department of Cultural Analysis and Theory at Stony Brook University, he is also a curator of the William A. Higinbotham Game Studies Collection there. In his new book Game After, Guins draws on both of his professional roles, bringing a curator’s concerns to game and design history and a historian’s and critic’s attention to bear on game collections and collectors. Game After arrives at critical moment in the study of games, one in which the status of games themselves, as well as the means and methods best …

Contributors, Carly A. Kocurek, Samuel Tobin

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Information about contributors to articles in volume 14, issue 1 of Reconstruction.

So, You Want To Use Next Generation Sequencing In Marine Systems? Insight From The Pan Pacific Advanced Studies Institute, D. A. Willette, F. W. Allendorf, P. H. Barber, D. J. Barshis, K. E. Carpenter, E. D. Crandall, W. A. Cresko, I. Fernandez-Silva, M. V. Matz, E. Meyer, M. D. Santos, L. W. Seeb, J. E. Seeb

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

The emerging field of next-generation sequencing (NGS) is rapidly expanding capabilities for cutting edge genomic research, with applications that can help meet marine conservation challenges of food security, biodiversity loss, and climate change. Navigating the use of these tools, however, is complex at best. Furthermore, applications of marine genomic questions are limited in developing nations where both marine biodiversity and threats to marine biodiversity are most concentrated. This is particularly true in Southeast Asia. The first Pan-Pacific Advanced Studies Institute (PacASI) entitled "Genomic Applications to Marine Science and Resource Management in Southeast Asia" was held in July 2012 in Dumaguete, …

What Constitutes The Success Or Failure Of Multinational Corporations (Mncs) In Foreign Markets? A Case Study Of Chinese And American Mncs, Shiwei Jiang

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Scholars have identified multinational corporations (MNCs) as increasingly important and influential actors in international politics. However, mainstream international studies scholarship has failed to explain why MNCs succeed or fail in entering foreign markets. Market entry is a particularly vexing question for U.S. and Chinese firms seeking to compete for each other's consumers. As this study shows, surprising differences in success among U.S. firms in China, as well as Chinese firms in the U.S., suggest that statist and market factors interact with corporate strategies in confounding ways. Through case studies in the internet, automobile and fast food industries, this dissertation builds …

Agewise: Fighting The New Ageism In America [Book Review], Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

Not since an eager, combat-booted pair of massive biceps attached to a deconstructionist waterbug with a PhD buttonholed me and shoved a Cultural Studies reader into my trembling matchstick arms has a single text caused me to enact as many multiple readings and to apply as many simultaneous readings as Margaret Morganroth Gullette’s Agewise: Fight the New Ageism in America. Honestly, I cannot offer a review of this text. It does not need one. I am only able to respond to it, and even then with the timidity, awe and respect imbued in the above-cited recollection. To put it simply—if …

Not A Hearing Loss, A Deaf Gain: Power, Self-Naming, And The Deaf Community, David J. Thomas

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

Self-naming has long stood as the primary assertion of power for disenfranchised communities in the western world. While person first language (e.g. person who is deaf) has been the preferred language of disability and disability services for the last 20 years, members of the Deaf community have asserted their cultural capital, and indeed, their Deafhood, or defining the experience of being ‘deaf in the world’, through the power of self-naming. This research examines attitudes toward language, self-naming, and disability in the Deaf community and seeks to move toward a more attentive, sensitive, and responsive language policy in the academy.

Historically, …

From Fandom To Franchise: Generational Discourse Among Fans And Producers, Nicholas C. Benson

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

Generational discourse surrounding fandom has been an understudied area of media studies. Using Disney's TRON franchise as a case study, this thesis looks at that discourse as it exists in two areas. The first chapter draws on interviews with several actual TRON fans and looks at how the concept of generation is imagined within the TRON fan community. The second chapter draws from promotional interviews done with TRON creator Steven Lisberger to analyze the way the concept of generation functions within the decision making practices and formation of career capital within Hollywood. Ultimately, this paper concludes that the concept of …

Imaginenative 2012: Ecocinema And The Indigenous Film Festival, Salma Monani, Miranda Brady

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Much scholarship points to how ecological concerns are never far from Indigenous struggles for political sovereignty and public participation. In this paper we turn to the Indigenous film festival as a relatively understudied yet rich site to explore such ecological concerns. Specifically, we consider, the Toronto-based ImagineNATIVE, a prominent hub in the Indigenous film festival circuit. Through examining the festival’s 2012 film selections, we highlight films with explicit and less overt eco-activist messages. While the films themselves speak to eco-imaginations, we also draw from the festival experience to consider how the event itself participates in eco-sensibilities through its …

In Defense Of Narcissism: Blogging As Foucauldian Technology Of The Self, Evgeniya Boklage

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

The application of the idea of narcissism stretches from a description of a narrowly conceived mental illness to a more general characterization of contemporary social condition. It has been used pejoratively to describe self-absorbed, egoistic, and uncivic attitudes and behavior. Returning to the Foucauldian technologies of the self – a philosophical account which tries to rehabilitate the love of the self and the idea of self-care as a positive social force – the present article utilizes this perspective to analyze the narcissistic, yet not uncivic, nature of blogging. It addresses a long-standing conflict between individualist and collectivist values in which …

Contributors, Kane Faucher

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Information about contributors to articles in volume 13, issue 3/4 of Reconstruction.

Veblen Does The Ipad: Ipadification And The Technologies Of Conspicuous Consumption, Tara Brabazon

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Thorstein Veblen was one of the great scholars of the twentieth century. Indeed, his most famous concept has entered the realm of cliché: conspicuous consumption. Yet the density of his prose has meant that his wider arguments about waste, class and capitalism have not travelled well into the 21st century. Therefore, this article combines the great scholar of the 20th century with one of the oddest products of the 21st century: the iPad. Exploring why the iPad emerged – in multiple versions – through the global economic crisis, Veblen’s theories of waste gain both renewed effectiveness and application.

On Agewise: Fighting The New Ageism In America, By Margaret Morganroth Gullette, Marc Ouellette

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Not since an eager, combat-booted pair of massive biceps attached to a deconstructionist waterbug with a PhD buttonholed me and shoved a Cultural Studies reader into my trembling matchstick arms has a single text caused me to enact as many multiple readings and to apply as many simultaneous readings as Margaret Morganroth Gullette’s Agewise: Fight the New Ageism in America. Honestly, I cannot offer a review of this text. It does not need one. I am only able to respond to it, and even then with the timidity, awe and respect imbued in the above-cited recollection. To …

Review Of The Warcraft Civilization, By William Sims Bainbridge, Anthony T. Sansone

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The evolving complexity of video games in narrative, gameplay and technology has steadily pulled researchers from game studies and other disciplines into examinations of games and what they say about our culture. Some examine what games say about players and what their activity says about them as part of society. Others explore what the game itself reflects about our culture; how a specific game can, could or does affect our society.

Plight Of The Gameur : Inhibitors To Empathic Connection With Representation Of Suffering In Outreach Games, Kristopher John Purzycki

English Theses & Dissertations

The field of serious game studies, while growing, is still working through the variables that create the conditions for a discernible effect towards real-world player behavior. One branch of serious games I refer to as outreach games aim at informing and prompting the player to take further real-world action. However, a significant impediment to this appeal is the relationship between the player and the game. Referring to the role of the flaneur in post-colonial literature, I describe how the relationship between whom I refer to as the gameur and the outreach game is similar to the urban wanderer, eavesdropping on …

The Residual Resistance Of The Individual Within The Rhizomatic Hegemony Of The Internet, Emma Katherine Wolfe

English Theses & Dissertations

Networked cyborgs that exist within the non-hierarchical rhizomatic network of the Internet risk losing the concept of their individuality as our identity becomes less important than the group. However, if the rhizomatic network is thought of as a hegemony that exists on the Internet, we can resist this through the residual notion of individual identity. Since cyborgs must perform in order to exist on the rhizomatic network, they can become aware of and perform their individuality through awareness of the computer medium. There are three methods for networked cyborgs to assert their individuality discussed in this thesis.

The first is …

“I Know It When I See It”: Style, Simulation And The ‘Short-Circuit Sign’, Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

The contemporary production of “style” relies heavily on the implementation of the “short-circuit sign” and the relationship of both to the emptiness of fourth-order simulation and to the remediation of successive visual forms. In distinguishing the “short-circuit sign,” film scholar James Monaco highlights the important role of cultural codes in the naturalization and the reification of on-screen images so that signifier and signified become identical, or are perceived as such. It is the cultural codes, then, that distinguish this mode from the establishment of a sign’s iconicity, insofar as the “short-circuit sign” belongs, as it were, to the genre and …

Exploring Views Of The Family Unit As Conveyed By Kinetic Family Drawings Created By Children From The Filipino-American Group, Rebecca Masia

EVMS School of Health Professions Theses & Dissertations

There have been contrasting opinions about children’s drawings. Considerable research is in support of culture having an influence on the drawings of children and adolescents, in that there are visible differences in drawing style, content, etc. Whereas, other research states that many characteristics in children’s drawings are universal constructs. Focus was placed on the family unit in terms of art assessment because research supports that the family cannot be understood outside of the context of culture. The current study sought to recognize how children portray the family unit and whether culturally-specific patterns would emerge through their family drawings.

Due to …

Zombies As A Generational Metaphor: Connections Between George A. Romero, Zombies And Fandom -- A Critical Study, Alfredo Torres

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

Since the creation of the modern day zombie by George A. Romero in his directorial debut with the genre altering film Night of the Living Dead in 1968, zombie have been associated with becoming a metaphoric representation of social and cultural issues surrounding the times these films were released, with Romero's films being at the forefront of this phenomenon. A review of Romero's career including his influences was examined as well as the film history of the zombie subgenre, the connections it has to its fans and how the fans influenced the development of the genre. A survey was connected …

Marine Phytoplankton Temperature Versus Growth Responses From Polar To Tropical Waters- Outcome Of A Scientific Community-Wide Study, Philip W. Boyd, Tatiana A. Rynearson, Evelyn A. Armstrong, Feixue Fu, Kendra Hayashi, Zhangxi Hu, David A. Hutchins, Elena Litchman, Margaret R. Mulholland, Uta Passow, Robert F. Stzepek, Kerry A. Whittaker, Elizabeth Yu, Mridul K. Thomas

OES Faculty Publications

“It takes a village to finish (marine) science these days”

Paraphrased from Curtis Huttenhower (the Human Microbiome project)

The rapidity and complexity of climate change and its potential effects on ocean biota are challenging how ocean scientists conduct research. One way in which we can begin to better tackle these challenges is to conduct community-wide scientific studies. This study provides physiological datasets fundamental to understanding functional responses of phytoplankton growth rates to temperature. While physiological experiments are not new, our experiments were conducted in many laboratories using agreed upon protocols and 25 strains of eukaryotic and prokaryotic phytoplankton …

American Exceptionalism And The Historical Fiction Of Chabon And Delillo: Media Identity Commodification And The Truth Of Lies, Samm Yeakel

English Theses & Dissertations

At the heart of any democratic nation lie the individuals that inhabit its borders, heed allegiance to its flag, comprise its political and economical bodies, and fight the very wars that disrupt its political ideals. Max Weber, who is revered not merely as a great sociologist, but the sociologist, contends that any sociological explanation regarding the w1derlying will and motives of these individuals must relate to their self-conscious actions. But, however self-conscious these actions may appear, they are decidedly influenced by external factors, and, as will be shown, a well-constructed novel captures the interplay between the individual, the nation, and …

Crosswords At A Crossroad: The Puzzle Turns 100. What Is The Clue To Its Survival?, Lynn J. Feigenbaum

Institute for the Humanities Theses

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the crossword on Dec. 21, 2013 will be a dedicated, demanding and outspoken following – an online community that may be the key to its future as a popular American pastime. The crossword puzzle has always had a tight-knit core of fans, even in its earliest years. But, for the most part, doing a crossword was a solitary pursuit. That has changed with the advent of a burgeoning fan community on the internet, a virtual community of crossword enthusiasts. It is not far-fetched to regard the saga of the crossword as a microcosm of modern …

The User Experience Of Participation: Tracing The Intersection Of Sociotechnical Design And Cultural Practice In Digital Ecosystems, David L. Jones

English Theses & Dissertations

In this dissertation, I combine methods from Technical Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, and User Experience Design to trace the social and creative practices of social web participants. Using actor network theory, I explore the concept of participation as social and creative practice that demands coordinative knowledge work enacted within a cultural space. Leveraging the insight gained from this research, I develop the user experience of participation as a research and design methodology that privileges the movement of people and information in order to structure and re-structure social connections.

I explore this methodology through three intersections between people and technology. …

Graduate News, Office Of Graduate Studies, Old Dominion University

Graduate News

February 2013 issue of Graduate News from the Office of Graduate Studies (now, ODU Graduate School).

Impulsivity Like Traits And Risky Driving Behaviors Among College Students, Matthew R. Pearson, Elaine M. Murphy, Ashley N. Doane

Psychology Faculty Publications

The present study examined the predictive effects of five impulsivity-like traits (Premeditation, Perseverance, Sensation Seeking, Negative Urgency, and Positive Urgency) on driving outcomes (driving errors, driving lapses, driving violations, cell phone driving, traffic citations, and traffic collisions). With a convenience sample of 266 college student drivers, we found that each of the impulsivity-like traits was related to multiple risky driving outcomes. Positive Urgency (tendency to act impulsively when experiencing negative affect) was the most robust predictor of risky driving outcomes. Positive Urgency is a relatively newly conceptualized impulsivity-like trait that was not examined in the driving literature previously, suggesting a …

Editor's Introduction: "Making Sense Of The Senseless: A Case For The Insufficiency Of Theory And Hermeneutics", Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

This issue is a wonderful compilation of truly excellent essays. I can assure readers that I have read and appreciated them. Indeed, several of them came through my inbox during various stages of preparation and it is encouraging to see such a healthy roster of scholarly contributions. I wish I were able to do them justice. Please read them. Enjoy them. The work alone should give us hope. People are thinking critically and responding creatively. This in and of itself is a good thing. What follows, then, is a call for more good things. It is part response, part self-directed …

Married, With Children And An Xbox: Compromise In Video Games Play, Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) In a home with two children under six, managing to find the time and the games that allow for play with a partner who has completely different tastes and capabilities produces compromises both inside and outside the game, as well as a hybrid form that spans the two. This last point highlights the fact that compromise remains a popularly studied topic in considerations of games, but only within very discrete boundaries that do not necessarily have anything to do with play or with players. Said another way, compromise appears in studies that foreground games as promoting aggression and …