Location: Room 12, U16 Building - Via Raffaello Giolli 5, Milan
Also online (LINK)
Keynote: Prof. Braxton Soderman, University of California Irvine
Discussant: Prof. Andrea Galimberti and Prof. Paolo Monti, University of Milano-Bicocca
Chair: Prof. Francesca Antonacci, University of Milano-Bicocca
This seminar will critically examine the concept and experience of psychological flow within games, play, and digital cultures from different disciplinary and epistemological perspectives.
The seminar will introduce and analyze the history, theory, and politics of flow, including its development by the Hungarian American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and its widespread use within the fields of game and play studies. In particular, the seminar will offer a critical reading of flow as an ideology, an ideology that privileges individual and personal change over collective forms of social transformation.
As a form of flow culture, contemporary digital media perpetuate problems of social alienation. Transforming society to reduce alienation, social inequality, and the addictive effect of contemporary technology requires a critical understanding and rethinking of flow.
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Braxton Soderman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Film & Media Studies and co-chairs the Humanities Center’s Digital Humanities Exchange (DHX), a group of faculty, staff, and graduate students who share interests in developing digital avenues for humanities research at UCI. He researches videogames, critical theory, new media aesthetics, and theories of play.
An event organized as part of the Permanent Seminar "Educational and Socio-Cultural Changes and Opportunities in the Digital Transition" by the CAPTED Research Center