Kishonna L. Gray - Feminism in Play

Games are pervasive in contemporary life, intersecting with leisure, work, health, culture, history, technology, politics, industry, and beyond. These contexts span topics, cross disciplines, and bridge professions.

Palgrave Games in Context situates games and play within such interdisciplinary and interprofessional contexts, resulting in accessible, applicable, and practical scholarship for students, researchers, game designers, and industry professionals. What does it mean to study, critique, and create games in context? This series eschews conventional classificationssuch as academic discipline or game genreand instead looks to practical, real-world situations to shape analysis and ground discussion. A single text might bring together professionals working in the field, critics, scholars, researchers, and designers. The result is a broad range of voices from a variety of disciplinary and professional backgrounds contributing to an accessible, practical series on the various and varied roles of games and play.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/16027

Cover credit: Keith Mclean

Cover design by Fatima Jamadar

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG

The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

It is a commonplace, but a true one, to start by saying that this book would not have been possible without the efforts of a great many people. We owe thanks to the generous colleagues who donated their time and intellectual energies to help review manuscripts for this volume: Jennifer Whitson, Steve Wilcox, Betsy Brey, Kim Nguyen, and Rachel Miles.

We would also like to thank our fellow editors who did magnificent work on the other two volumes in this trilogy. Of course, this book can and does stand on its own, but it has been enriched by our collaboration with Todd Harper, Meghan Blythe Adams, and Nick Taylor on the Queerness in Play and Masculinities in Play anthologies.

We would be remiss to overlook the editorial team at Palgrave Macmillan, notably Shaun Vigil, whose support made this ambitious project possible, and Glenn Ramirez for laying out clearly how to make it actual.

Kishonna would like to thank the courageous women inside and around gaming for their daily sacrifices and for sharing their stories with us. The world needs to know how dope you are.

Emma would like to thank everyone from First Person Scholar including faculty advisors Neil Randall, Gerald Voorhees, and Jennifer Whitson. Special thanks go to my fellow FPS editors and friends Elise Vist, Alexandra Orlando, Judy Ehrentraut, Betsy Brey, Meghan Adams, Chris Lawrence, Phil Miletic, Rob Parker, Jason Hawreliak, Michael Hancock, and especially Steve Wilcoxwithout all of you I wouldnt be studying games. I would also like to thank all my family and friends including my favorite gamer, my brother Edward. Extra special thanks to my partner Keith and my mother Nancy who do the daily labour of listening to me complain while making sure Im safe, fed, and happy.

Gerald would also like to thank colleagues who provided advice, encouragement, criticism, and even resources to help make this project happen. Vershawn Young, Jennifer Simpson, Jennifer Roberts-Smith, Kim Nguyen, Neil Randall, Jennifer Jenson, and Suzanne de Castell all deserve thanks, as do any others I may have neglected to list here. I reserve my most special gratitude for Kim and Quinn for their support during this project, but more importantly for their sustained encouragement to better practice feminism in my everyday life.