Author: nunderbe

A new article is out written with my colleague Peter Smith on our Andean culture-themed board game project. The project is called Proceso de Lana and allows players to role-play as members of an Andean village as they process wool, weave it into textiles, and sell at the market. It conveys, through the game mechanics and thematic content, Andean ideas about reciprocity and cooperative labor. Check out the journal announcement here:

https://catalanjournal.wordpress.com/2018/11/12/game-studies-today-special-issue-online/

We just published a new digital story at Aquifer: The Florida Review Online. Check it out:

And send us your story!

 

I’m recently back from beautiful Zakynthos, Greece where I presented two papers at the international digital storytelling conference. The first, “Rewind: Unpacking the Media Ecology of Today’s University Students,” was co-authored with former student and now Assistant Professor Amanda Hill. For this paper, we analyzed nearly 50 digital stories that had been created as part of the I am UCF digital storytelling project (iamucf.cah.ucf.edu) to identify media aesthetics, assets, and editing choices. The second paper, “Curating Digital Stories for a Literary Magazine: Theoretical and Pedagogical Approaches,” was co-authored with my colleague Lisa Roney who is editor of Aquifer: The Florida Review.

I am happy to work with such great colleagues and former students on interdisciplinary digital storytelling projects and research, and to have the opportunity to meet more scholars and practitioners in this area!

Aquifer: The Florida Review Online continues to publish digital stories and electronic literature/interactive fiction. Interested in having your story considered for publication? Visit this link: https://lnkd.in/e8WCxiA https://lnkd.in/erE7vKV.

This month’s digital story is a really moving personal narrative about a Korean-American man who reflects on the meaning of his name. Check it out here:

https://floridareview.cah.ucf.edu/article/surnames/

 

The new academic year is starting, and so I’m looking back on my summer. I was grateful to receive a Strong Research Fellowship to study in the extensive video game archives of The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY. I was conducting primary research for my book about the history of video games, focusing on The Strong’s collections related to women and people of color as game designers, as well as on documentation related to the creative conceptualization process of video and electronic game design. 

Thanks to The Strong for giving me this opportunity to join a list of past recipients of this fellowship: http://www.museumofplay.org/research-publications/research-fellowships/past-fellowship-recipients. They were great hosts and the collections are inspiring and impressive. I encourage others to consider applying!

I have a new article out in a focus issue of Collections on Storytelling:  Oral Histories, Archives, and Museums edited by Juilee Decker.  The article considers ways that heritage materials can be presented in digital environments in an engaging and useful way.  The goal of the piece is to facilitate dialogue between archivists/curators/heritage professionals on the one hand, and digital media specialists on the other, focusing on affordances and constraints of particular digital storytelling platforms.  It presents a combination of scholarship and example projects to show how these ideas can help museum and archive professionals present heritage materials.  There are a number of interesting articles in this special issue on a timely subject.

In mid-June I was invited to speak on digital heritage at the first meeting of the U.S. Chapter of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies.  Held at Arkansas State, the event was organized by Gregory Hansen and Michelle Stefano.  There were presenters and attendees there from folklore, history, anthropology, archaeology, library sciences, archives, museums, and other fields.  It was a pleasure to spend a few days talking about heritage with people equally passionate about the topic. 

This meeting is part of a growing movement to establish critical heritage studies in the U.S., a movement that has grown in recent years abroad (read about it here:  http://www.criticalheritagestudies.org/. 

Here’s a link to the conference Website for more information:  https://criticalheritage.org/2017-meeting/. 

 

Earlier this summer I had a wonderful visit to Bucknell University in PA to talk about my research and meet with faculty who want to integrate more digital methods into their teaching and scholarship. Wonderful hosts, beautiful campus, interesting work. Thanks to workshop organizer and fellow Indiana University Folklore alum Jeff Tolbert for organizing such a stimulating event! Here’s a link to more information on the talk: http://dps.bucknell.edu/natalie-underberg-goode-digital-and-video-ethnography-2017-workshop-speaker/

Last semester, my Digital Media students helped me curate the first set of digital stories that were published on the new online companion site to The Florida Review, called Aquifer:  The Florida Review Online.

The Florida Review is an internationally distributed literary journal published out of the University of Central Florida, and edited by Lisa Roney.  Throughout the semester, the students first analyzed digital stories according to ideas about personal narratives and visual storytelling covered in class, then proposed ways to leverage the characteristics of Web 2.0 storytelling in their presentation, and finally proposed a selection rationale for accepting digital stories for online publication.  So far, two digital stories have been published online (https://floridareview.cah.ucf.edu/aquifer), and more are in the pipeline.

We’re seeking more submissions for publication consideration as the project moves into the future.  Here’s the link to submit a story: https://floridareview.submittable.com/submit.

Spread the word!

My UCF Digital Media colleague Peter Smith and I recently returned from a thought-provoking and fun panel on conveying heritage through board games.  CAA (Computer Applications in Archaeology) 2017 was hosted by Georgia State in Atlanta, and Peter and I presented on a board game prototype that presented Peruvian cultural heritage through game mechanics that required players to simulate reciprocal thinking and decision-making.  The panel was organized by Erik Champion from Curtin University in Australia, who a week later came to UCF to give a talk on virtual heritage, serious games, and cultural learning.  Thanks to SVAD’s Games Research Lab for letting us use a space in their lab for brainstorming and developing the prototype!