Monthly Archives: July 2018

Daily Bruin: “Comic-Con panel discusses Afrofuturism in ‘Black Panther,’ Octavia Butler’s works” (Roderic Crooks mentioned)

July 27, 2018

Five months after its release, scholars are still meticulously dissecting Ryan Coogler’s film in the hopes of gaining a thorough understanding of its impact on the black community. The 2018 San Diego Comic Convention panel “Beyond Wakanda: Intersectional Afrofuturism” analyzed “Black Panther” as well as the literary works of Octavia Butler, a black feminist and science fiction author, through the lens of Afrofuturism while encouraging audience engagement. Afrofuturism is a black aesthetic, philosophical and artistic movement that dates back to the mid-20th century, said panelist Dalena Hunter, an archivist and librarian at the UCLA Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. Among other panelists discussing the movement were Shani Miller and Kelly Besser, UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive and Library Special Collections archivists, respectively, as well as UC Irvine assistant professor Roderic Crooks.

Read the full story at the Daily Bruin.

Wired: “Google Glass is back–now with artificial intelligence” (Gillian Hayes quoted)

July 25, 2018

Gillian Hayes, a professor who works on human-computer interaction at University of California Irvine, says the Plataine project and plugging Google’s AI services into Glass play to the strengths of the controversial hardware. … “Image and voice recognition technology getting better will make wearable devices more functional,” Hayes says.

Read the full story at Wired.

Bustle: “Why The Best Video Games Are The Ones That Make Men Cry” (Bonnie Ruberg quoted)

July 24, 2018

While Gone Home isn’t a new game (it debuted in 2013), it has set a new standard for role playing video games where the player embodies someone going through a realistic life experience. ….”You can still make choices you feel good about or feel bad about. There’s almost a moral component,” says Bonnie Ruberg, professor of informatics at University of California, Irvine and a scholar of queer video games.

Read the full story at Bustle.

Platypus: “A Ludicrous Relationship? A Conversation between Anthropology and Game Studies” (Co-authored by Informatics Ph.D. Students)

July 20, 2018

Informatics Ph.D. students Spencer Ruelos and Amanda Cullen had their article titled “A Ludicrous Relationship? A Conversation between Anthropology and Game Studies” published on Platypus, the official blog of the Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing. The blog post discusses the need for those who work in both game studies and anthropology to build deeper connections between the two disciplines in order to help scholars overcome finding themselves lacking a sense of academic belonging in either field.

Read the full blog post on Platypus.

Inside Higher Ed: “Melting Away Myths” (Kurt Squire quoted)

July 19, 2018

Kurt Squire, a former UW Madison professor who now teaches at the University of California, Irvine, thinks that the political and economic climate of the state has allowed the town-gown divide to grow. “There’s been a really strong effort by right-wing think tanks to create a division between universities and the public,” Squire said. “The animosity is really clear — there are members of the state Legislature that have it out for the university and they don’t really hide it.”

Read the full story at Inside Higher Ed.

SportTechie: “Esports Curriculum Meets High School Children Where They Play” (Constance Steinkuehler quoted)

July 17, 2018

“You see the same effects for esports leagues that you do in sports programs in general,” said Constance Steinkuehler, a professor at UCI and one of the main developers of the curriculum. “We’ve seen a decrease in absenteeism, an increase in feeling associated with school, and an increase in positive relationships with teachers.”

Steinkuehler is one of the leading researchers in this space. Before coming to UCI she served as a Senior Policy Analyst in the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House Executive Office. Now she studies how schools can connect esports and academics.

Read the full story at SportTechie.