<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr">Dear friends,<div><br></div><div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:garamond,&quot;times new roman&quot;,serif"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">I hope this email finds you well.</span></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:garamond,&quot;times new roman&quot;,serif"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:garamond,&quot;times new roman&quot;,serif"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">I am delighted to inform you that Souvik Kar and I will be guest-editing a special issue of <i>Press Start</i> on videogames, postcolonialism, and India. Do reach out to us if you are interested. The call for papers is attached below. </span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">We look forward to receiving abstracts by Oct 3, 2022. </span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Please let us know if you have any queries.</span></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:garamond,&quot;times new roman&quot;,serif"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:garamond,&quot;times new roman&quot;,serif"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Thank you for your interest.  </span></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:garamond,&quot;times new roman&quot;,serif"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><font face="arial, sans-serif">Warmly,</font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><font face="arial, sans-serif">Zahra</font></div></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">------------------------------</span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">------------------------------</span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">------------------------------</span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">------------------------------</span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">-------</span><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><p style="box-sizing:border-box;line-height:25px;margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:&quot;Noto Sans&quot;,-apple-system,&quot;system-ui&quot;,&quot;Segoe UI&quot;,Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,sans-serif;font-size:14px"><span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:bolder">Call for Papers: Special Issue “The Playful Postcolonial: Culturing Videogames in India”</span></p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;line-height:25px;margin:20px 0px;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:&quot;Noto Sans&quot;,-apple-system,&quot;system-ui&quot;,&quot;Segoe UI&quot;,Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,sans-serif;font-size:14px">Guest editors: Zahra Rizvi &amp; Souvik Kar</p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;line-height:25px;margin:20px 0px;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:&quot;Noto Sans&quot;,-apple-system,&quot;system-ui&quot;,&quot;Segoe UI&quot;,Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,sans-serif;font-size:14px"> </p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;line-height:25px;margin:20px 0px;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:&quot;Noto Sans&quot;,-apple-system,&quot;system-ui&quot;,&quot;Segoe UI&quot;,Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,sans-serif;font-size:14px">“the empire plays back . . . with its own rules of play.”</p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;line-height:25px;margin:20px 0px;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:&quot;Noto Sans&quot;,-apple-system,&quot;system-ui&quot;,&quot;Segoe UI&quot;,Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,sans-serif;font-size:14px">—Souvik Mukherjee (2017, p. 7)</p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;line-height:25px;margin:20px 0px;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:&quot;Noto Sans&quot;,-apple-system,&quot;system-ui&quot;,&quot;Segoe UI&quot;,Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,sans-serif;font-size:14px"> </p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;line-height:25px;margin:20px 0px;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:&quot;Noto Sans&quot;,-apple-system,&quot;system-ui&quot;,&quot;Segoe UI&quot;,Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,sans-serif;font-size:14px">At the DiGRA 2022 conference, DiGRA India presented a panel on videogames and India, announcing a turn in game studies—the “waking up” to the discursive possibilities and critical engagement of what game developer Ernest Adams (2009) calls “the sleeping giant” of the gaming industry—India. This giant presents some of the most complex and diverse gaming cultures that are both unique in their experience—informed by the intersection of class, gender, religion, caste, and more (Chowdhury &amp; Rizvi, 2021)—and, simultaneously, have strong affinities with the rest of South Asia and the postcolonial Global South (Mukherjee, 2017; Mukherjee &amp; Hammar, 2018). At the same time, there still exists a paucity of in-depth scholarly engagement with videogames in India, both produced within the country itself as well as globally, that draws on non-Western, specifically Indian cultures and geographies. These constructed absences hide behind them a world of postcolonial possibility, ranging from Nodding Head Games<em style="box-sizing:border-box">’ </em>incorporation of Hindu mythology and Indian art in <em style="box-sizing:border-box">Raji: An Ancient Epic </em>(2020) to Studio Oleomingus’ attempt to explore “how interactive fiction might be used to pollute a single reductive record of the past or of a people” (Jani, 2014, para. 2). As a system that is informed by capitalist and colonialist ideologies, the videogame industry finds itself facing these playful and yet hopeful possibilities of resistance and subversion in the gaming cultures of India, where participation in and through postcolonial media opens up a field of questions that need urgent tending to. </p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;line-height:25px;margin:20px 0px;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:&quot;Noto Sans&quot;,-apple-system,&quot;system-ui&quot;,&quot;Segoe UI&quot;,Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,sans-serif;font-size:14px">What happens when pleasures of play are revealed to be imperial (Jayanth, 2021)? How do gamers in India negotiate play? How do videogames mirror <em style="box-sizing:border-box">and</em> affect India in the popular imagination and on-ground? Where is India in the map of game studies? This special issue is an ambitious venture in seeking to understand and bring to the fore not only these complexities but also to redress some of the most glaring absences in games research.</p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;line-height:25px;margin:20px 0px;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:&quot;Noto Sans&quot;,-apple-system,&quot;system-ui&quot;,&quot;Segoe UI&quot;,Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,sans-serif;font-size:14px">The issue will be seeking submissions on themes such as, but not limited to, the following topics: </p><ul style="box-sizing:border-box;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:&quot;Noto Sans&quot;,-apple-system,&quot;system-ui&quot;,&quot;Segoe UI&quot;,Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,sans-serif;font-size:14px"><li style="margin-left:15px;box-sizing:border-box">Postcolonialism and videogames</li><li style="margin-left:15px;box-sizing:border-box">Game design and India</li><li style="margin-left:15px;box-sizing:border-box">Representations of India in videogames</li><li style="margin-left:15px;box-sizing:border-box">Gamers and gaming cultures in India</li><li style="margin-left:15px;box-sizing:border-box">History of games in India</li><li style="margin-left:15px;box-sizing:border-box">Analysis of specific Indian games</li><li style="margin-left:15px;box-sizing:border-box">Platform debates in India</li><li style="margin-left:15px;box-sizing:border-box">Videogames, social media, and the Indian cyberspace</li><li style="margin-left:15px;box-sizing:border-box">Situating play in India vis-à-vis play in South Asia and the Global South</li><li style="margin-left:15px;box-sizing:border-box">Identity politics in videogames</li><li style="margin-left:15px;box-sizing:border-box">Game studies in India</li></ul><p style="box-sizing:border-box;line-height:25px;margin:20px 0px;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:&quot;Noto Sans&quot;,-apple-system,&quot;system-ui&quot;,&quot;Segoe UI&quot;,Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,sans-serif;font-size:14px">If you are interested in participating in this special issue, please email a 400-500 word abstract (plus references) to <a href="mailto:rs.zrizvisasuke@jmi.ac.in" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(0,0,0);box-sizing:border-box;background-color:transparent">rs.zrizvisasuke@jmi.ac.in</a> and <a href="mailto:eic.press.start@gmail.com" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(0,0,0);box-sizing:border-box;background-color:transparent">eic.press.start@gmail.com</a> by October 3, 2022. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out within a few weeks and full papers will be due by January 31, 2023. The expected date of publication is February 2024.</p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;line-height:25px;margin:20px 0px;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:&quot;Noto Sans&quot;,-apple-system,&quot;system-ui&quot;,&quot;Segoe UI&quot;,Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,sans-serif;font-size:14px">Articles are expected to be 5000–8000 words (including references and abstracts) and to use the <em style="box-sizing:border-box">Press Start</em> template. Informal enquiries may be directed to Zahra Rizvi (<a href="mailto:rs.zrizvisasuke@jmi.ac.in" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(0,0,0);box-sizing:border-box;background-color:transparent">rs.zrizvisasuke@jmi.ac.in</a>) and Souvik Kar (<a href="mailto:la20resch11010@iith.ac.in" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(0,0,0);box-sizing:border-box;background-color:transparent">la20resch11010@iith.ac.in</a>). We also invite you to  join our friendly Facebook group (<a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/PressStartJournal" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(0,0,0);box-sizing:border-box;background-color:transparent">https://www.facebook.com/groups/PressStartJournal</a>), where we will be more than happy to answer any questions you may have.</p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;line-height:25px;margin:20px 0px;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:&quot;Noto Sans&quot;,-apple-system,&quot;system-ui&quot;,&quot;Segoe UI&quot;,Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,sans-serif;font-size:14px"> </p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;line-height:25px;margin:20px 0px;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:&quot;Noto Sans&quot;,-apple-system,&quot;system-ui&quot;,&quot;Segoe UI&quot;,Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,sans-serif;font-size:14px"><span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:bolder">References: </span> </p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;line-height:25px;margin:20px 0px;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:&quot;Noto Sans&quot;,-apple-system,&quot;system-ui&quot;,&quot;Segoe UI&quot;,Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,sans-serif;font-size:14px">Adams, E. (2009). The promise of India: Ancient culture, modern game design. <em style="box-sizing:border-box">The Designer’s Notebook: The Personal Website of Dr. Ernest W. Adams</em>. <a href="http://www.designersnotebook.com/Lectures/India/india.htm" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(0,0,0);box-sizing:border-box;background-color:transparent">http://www.designersnotebook.com/Lectures/India/india.htm</a></p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;line-height:25px;margin:20px 0px;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:&quot;Noto Sans&quot;,-apple-system,&quot;system-ui&quot;,&quot;Segoe UI&quot;,Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,sans-serif;font-size:14px">Chowdhury, P., &amp; Rizvi, Z. (2021). Gaming as ghosts: Spectres and absences in games and game Cultures [Keynote address]. <em style="box-sizing:border-box">2021 DiGRA India Conference on Games, Culture(s), and India: Dispatches from a Playful Subcontinent</em>. November 20-21, India (virtual conference). </p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;line-height:25px;margin:20px 0px;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:&quot;Noto Sans&quot;,-apple-system,&quot;system-ui&quot;,&quot;Segoe UI&quot;,Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,sans-serif;font-size:14px">Jani, D. (2014). About. <em style="box-sizing:border-box">Studio Oleomingus</em>. <a href="https://oleomingus.com/about-1" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(0,0,0);box-sizing:border-box;background-color:transparent">https://oleomingus.com/about-1</a>. Accessed August 24, 2022. </p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;line-height:25px;margin:20px 0px;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:&quot;Noto Sans&quot;,-apple-system,&quot;system-ui&quot;,&quot;Segoe UI&quot;,Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,sans-serif;font-size:14px">Jayanth, M. (2021). White protagonism and imperial pleasures in game design [Keynote address]. <em style="box-sizing:border-box">2021 DiGRA India Conference on Games, Culture(s), and India: Dispatches from a Playful Subcontinent</em>. November 20-21, India (virtual conference). </p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;line-height:25px;margin:20px 0px;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:&quot;Noto Sans&quot;,-apple-system,&quot;system-ui&quot;,&quot;Segoe UI&quot;,Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,sans-serif;font-size:14px">Mukherjee, S. (2017). <em style="box-sizing:border-box">Videogames and postcolonialism: Empire plays back</em>. Palgrave Macmillan.</p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;line-height:25px;margin:20px 0px;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:&quot;Noto Sans&quot;,-apple-system,&quot;system-ui&quot;,&quot;Segoe UI&quot;,Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,sans-serif;font-size:14px">Mukherjee, S., &amp; Hammar, E. (2018). Introduction to the special issue on postcolonial perspectives in game studies. <em style="box-sizing:border-box">Open Library of Humanities</em> <em style="box-sizing:border-box">4</em>(2), <a href="https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.309" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(0,0,0);box-sizing:border-box;background-color:transparent">https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.309</a></p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;line-height:25px;margin:20px 0px;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:&quot;Noto Sans&quot;,-apple-system,&quot;system-ui&quot;,&quot;Segoe UI&quot;,Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,sans-serif;font-size:14px">Nodding Head Games. (2020). <em style="box-sizing:border-box">Raji: An ancient epic </em>[Multiplatform]. Nodding Head Games.</p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;line-height:25px;margin:20px 0px 0px;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:&quot;Noto Sans&quot;,-apple-system,&quot;system-ui&quot;,&quot;Segoe UI&quot;,Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;,sans-serif;font-size:14px">Rizvi, Z., Bhattacharya, A., Lahiri, I., Chowdhury, P., Kar, S., &amp; Mukherjee, S. (2022). DiGRA India—Gaming the “sleeping giant”’ [Panel presentations]. <em style="box-sizing:border-box">DiGRA 2022 International Conference</em>.</p></div></div></div></div><br><div style="font-size:1.3em"><img style="font-size: 1.3em;"></div></div></div>