Deadline (EXTENDED): February 14, 2025
Dear colleagues,
We would like to share that the deadline for submitting an abstract to the anthology on Postcolonialism & Imperialism in and around Games has been extended to February 14th. You can find the original Call for Papers below:
This anthology published by Palgrave-Macmillan looks to evaluate post- and decolonial questions in game studies and identify future research trajectories and underexplored areas pertaining to questions of colonialism and imperialism in and around games. We seek submissions that expand on these questions.
The Deadline for abstracts is: 14th of February 2025. Abstract submissions (250-500 words) should be sent to postcolonialgamestudies@gmail.com
Background
The question of colonialism and its historical background radiation has not been relegated to the past. This is perhaps most noticeable today where a settler colony functioning as the beachhead for western imperial powers is conducting a genocide of the indigenous Palestinian people, while terrorizing and invading its neighbouring populations with extensive military and diplomatic support by Western governments despite massive public protests. The historical analogies to previous colonial occupations and conflicts are evident. Meanwhile, media rhetorics reminiscent of past European colonial empires (Trouillot 1995) are once again resurfacing with the depiction of the Other as misogynist terrorists and wealth-leeching refugees (Lean 2012), barbaric orcs (Shlapentokh 2013), and yellow peril (Tchen and Yeats 2014). The West’s descent into barbarism reflects Aimé Césaire’s Discourses on Colonialism (2000) where fascism at home and colonialism abroad are intertwined and explicated through how colonizers ‘decivilize’ themselves and “proceeds toward savagery” (ibid. 37-38). Concurrently, countries in the so-called Global South face further immiseration; military, economic, technological dependencies; and the unhindered challenges of disastrous climate change (Hickel et al., 2024). Modern games are no stranger to such dialectical movements, as they have reflected and reproduced 'the global color line' in their production, their consumption, and their textual representations (Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter 2021; Hammar et al. 2021; T. Mukherjee 2023; S. Mukherjee 2017; Murray 2017).
Since the special issue on Postcolonialist Perspectives in Games (S. Mukherjee and Hammar 2018) and Souvik Mukherjee’s Empire Plays Back (2017), the issue of postcolonialism and its theoretical traditions have deepened and explored in games research such as technodependencies and platforms (T. Mukherjee 2023; Baeza-González 2021; Falcão, Marques, and Mussa 2020; Nieborg, Young, and Joseph 2020); race and orientalism (Fickle 2019; Patterson 2020; Patterson and Fickle 2024); anti-colonial board games (Mochocki 2023), race and play (Trammell 2023); the status of Northern indigenous culture in and around games (O. Laiti et al. 2021; O. K. Laiti and Harrer 2023); and Indian boardgames (Rizvi and Kar 2024) and their colonial avatars (S. Mukherjee 2025), just to name a few. Game makers have also expanded on issues of colonialism in games (inkle 2021; Nidal Nijm Games 2022), and move towards what LaPensee, Laiti & Longboat (2022) call ‘sovereign games’. While the problem for game studies remains that the primary centers of knowledge production reside in the Global North (Penix-Tadsen and Frasca 2019), we fully acknowledge the contributions in the spaces in and around games and their study by people across the world in bringing fundamental question of history and present-day (post)colonialism as seen in cases such as South America (Falcão, Marques, and Mussa 2020; King 2024), South East Asia (Jiwandono 2024; 2023) and Africa (Opoku-Agyemang 2015; Randle 2024; Amoah and Tawia 2024).
Therefore, additional accounts if not critiques of the (mis)representation of Orientalist attitudes, race, delinking, hybridity, subalternity, Afro- and Indofuturism, notions of space and the fragmented postcolonial identities, dependency theory and unequal exchange, and evaluations of nationalisms in the Global South are consistently required. Indeed, commercial analogue and digital games would not exist in their current forms if not for the global division of the world between North and South. It is therefore imperative that games research inquire and identify aspects of postcolonialism and imperialism in and around games.
We seek submissions that expand on the established research and/or provide new and underexplored topics pertaining to postcolonialism and imperialism in and around games.
The Deadline for abstracts is: 14th of February 2025. Abstract submissions should be sent to postcolonialgamestudies@gmail.com.
Possible topics might include, but are not limited to:
· Colonialism / Neocolonialism / Postcolonialism
· The Other / Alterity
· Delinking / decoloniality
· Decolonization
· Orientalism
· Postcolonial praxis
· Imperialism / global capitalism / political economy
· Self-representation / voice / agency
· Third-Worldism
· Subalternity
· Nationalisms in the Global South
· Indigenous culture
· Religion(s) / Language(s) / Nationalism(s)
· Thirdspace
· Unequal exchange and the game industry
· Eurocentrism
· Game studies & politics of knowledge
· Ecology, colonialism, and game production
· Game platforms and colonialism
· Dependency theory and games
· Fascism as colonialism turned inward: Reactionary politics and games
Abstract submissions should comprise of:
Abstract (250-500 words)
Author information (short biographical statement of 200 words)
Abstract submissions should be sent to postcolonialgamestudies@gmail.com. Abstract submissions will then undergo an editorial review process. Authors will be notified of the outcome as soon as reports are received.
Timeline
Deadline for abstracts: 14th of February 2025
Notification of accepted abstracts: End of February 2025
Deadline for full articles: 23rd of May 2025
Chapter submissions should comprise of
Full-length article (5-8000 words) including references and a short bibliography.
Author information (short biographical statement of 200 words)
Best regards,
Dr. Souvik Mukherjee, Department of English, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, Kolkata, India
Dr. Emil Lundedal Hammar, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Bibliography
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Baeza-González, Sebastián. 2021. “Video Games Development in the Periphery: Cultural Dependency?” Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 103 (1): 39–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/04353684.2021.1894077.
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———. 2025. Indian Boardgames, Colonial Avatars: Transculturation, Colonialism and Boardgames. Oldenbourg: De Gruyter. https://www.degruyter.com/document/isbn/9783110758627/html.
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