CFP Women and Sexuality in Classical Video Games abstract deadline 12th January

Please send abstracts (maximum 300 words) for twenty-minute papers to Kate Cook
(kjc26@st-andrews.ac.uk) and Jane Draycott (Jane.Draycott@Glasgow.ac.uk) by Friday
12th January 2024. Event will be hybrid, with papers hosted at the University of
Glasgow on Friday 8th March 2024.

Although the depiction of women as oversexualised objects is a common trope of
video games, including those with classical settings (see e.g. Ciaccia 2022), modern
games also allow for more varied explorations of female sexuality, particularly those
games in the RPG genre (Lauteria and Wysocki 2015: 2). In games set in the ancient
world, women’s sexuality finds itself represented in two major forms: as part of the
depiction of NPCs, including historical figures such as Cleopatra, and as part of a
player’s interactive experience within the game world, including as a way for them to
create and shape their character. The representation of Greek sexuality including for
the female protagonist, Kassandra, was singled out for discussion in video games
media (e.g. Murnane 2019), and which characters are represented as “romanceable”
and why, attracts significant attention from players and game media which also often
works to see these romances within their classical contexts (see for example Corbett
2023, who saw the romance in Hades with Megaera as representing eros, whereas that
with Dusa demonstrated philia).

This workshop will delve into the questions of how and why women’s sexuality is
portrayed in classical video games, aiming to answer the following key questions. To
what degree are representations of female sexuality shaped by the classical or
historical context as it is represented in these games? To what extent can video games
represent a different narrative about women’s sexuality to other forms of modern
reception? How are the tensions between player agency and expectations and
historical or mythological ‘accuracy’ negotiated in representations of women’s
sexuality? In exploring these questions, we will continue to develop groundbreaking
research in a key area of the still vastly understudied field of women in classical video
games.

By ‘women’ we include all those who self-define as women, including (if they wish)
those with complex gender identities which include ‘woman’, and those who experience oppression as women. By
‘women’s sexuality’ we include all ways in which women experience and express themselves sexually.