“If you look at other cultural industries, they don’t have nearly the growth curve that games have had in the past few years,” says , professor of pedagogy & technology at 91��ɫ [Faculty of Education] and president of the Canadian Game Studies Association. “When almost 75 per cent of women work, to not have them somehow represented in this workforce is excluding them from something that has had massive investment from all these different countries.”

Jenson, who spent more than 10 years studying gender and gaming, found one of the reasons a girl might not break into gaming is access. “Girls don’t often have the context for play that necessarily includes other girls. They may play with their brothers, cousins or fathers.”

“Girls and boys – once they level up – [are] exactly the same,” says Jenson. “Because the game demands that you play a certain way in order to be successful. Once you get rid of the confounding variable of being novice in these environments, girls play very much like the boys.”

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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The lecture's title and topic are borrowed from , which Berland co-edited with Ryerson Professor Blake Fitzpatrick of the Documentary Media Program. Her work explores how military culture now has such a hold on society that many people cannot remember a time when the military was not a constant presence in their lives.

Right: Jody Berland

This military presence appears either physically or more abstractly through art and society as a whole. As Berland noted in an interview, “While civilian deaths and acts of torture have remained invisible and secret, it’s impossible to miss the images of invasion and imprisonment that circulate the world on the Internet, on TV and in video games.” Her presentation will begin by exploring recent events during the G20 summit in Toronto and then move to a broader examination of militarism in Canadian society.

Cultures of Militarization is a collection of essays penned by 22 international scholars and artists who have each contributed their own perspectives and experiences. Each of the contributions jointly identifies how a military culture brings devastation to communities and individuals.

Berland's lecture is part of the "Canada: Like You’ve Never Heard it Before” Speakers Series, which features open lectures delivered by 91��ɫ faculty. Produced by the Canadian Studies Program and the Students for Canadian Studies Club, the series has an interdisciplinary focus and promotes undergraduate research and study of Canada.

The series is co-sponsored by Vanier College, Winters College, New College, Stong College, Calumet College, Founders College and the Office of the Dean of the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

Submitted by Alison Sanelli, a second-year humanities student; republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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“Cultures of Militarization,” edited by (right), professor in 91��ɫ’s Department of Humanities, and Blake Fitzpatrick, professor in the School of Image Arts at Ryerson University, features contributions from 22 international scholars and artists.

Drawing on a rich array of research sites and interdisciplinary resources, the authors explore how human relations, social policies and cultural values come to be defined by military interests, and how such interests might be freshly understood. They delve into the notion that the culture of war is both hidden and widespread, reaching deep into civic culture and affecting government, families, media, entertainment, public policy and personal beliefs.

Berland cites the recent WikiLeaks exposé of classified US military documents as evidence of the hidden aspects of war. “It is interesting to note that US military operatives face military proceedings not for atrocities or misinformation, but for participating in leakages of classified documents,” Berland says. “And while civilian deaths and acts of torture have remained invisible and secret, it's impossible to miss the images of invasion and imprisonment that circulate the world on the Internet, on TV and in video games.”

Berland cites other prominent examples: the Pentagon's classified budget for research and acquisition of information development has increased 78 per cent since 2001, totaling $34 billion in 2009. “Our own military spends $9 billion on F-35 fighter planes while remaining silent on questions regarding their technical and military justification,” she says.

Berland notes that this widespread increase in militarization does not only affect war zones. In the community of Glace Bay, N.S., a debate rages about the naming of a new school after Jimmy MacNeil, a Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan in June 2010. From coast to coast, yellow ribbons adorn trees and lampposts, while in Ontario, Highway 401 is now known as the Highway of Heroes.

“Here in Toronto, we saw it play out in the streets during the G20 summit. Military culture is everywhere. Ultimately, we are all living the consequences of global militarization,” Berland says.

TOPIA subscribers will receive the special double issue; the book is available through . It will be formally launched at the Gladstone Hotel’s Melody Bar on Dec. 6, from 6 to 8pm. All are welcome.

For more information, visit the TOPIA website.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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Lead author and PhD candidate Joshua Granek and colleagues concluded that the reorganization of the brain’s cortical network, which they discovered in the young men with significant video game-playing experience, gave them an advantage not only in playing video games but also in performing other complex visuomotor tasks.

The authors wrote that other studies have suggested that individuals skilled in video game-playing have a more efficient brain network for controlling movement that includes the prefrontal, premotor, primary sensorimotor and parietal cortices.

Senior investigator Lauren Sergio, a professor in 91��ɫ’s School of Kinesiology and Health Science in the Faculty of Health, told the press that using high-resolution brain imaging, they were able to measure which brain areas were active at given times during the experiment. And, she said, rather than just looking at brain activity, they also “tested how the skills learned from video game experience can transfer over to new tasks”.

A key result was finding that during the increasingly difficult tasks, the less experienced video game players relied mostly on the parietal cortex (the brain area typically involved in hand-eye coordination), while the brain scans of the experienced gamers showed more activity in the prefrontal cortex at the front of the brain.

The study was also covered in on Sept. 27, on Sept. 26., Sept. 27 and on Sept. 26.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, with files courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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A project led by 91��ɫ Faculty of Education Professors Heather Lotherington and Jennifer Jenson at Joyce Public School in North 91��ɫ, and funded by the (SSHRC), has received two awards.

The 91��ɫ-Joyce Public School Multiliteracies Project involves graduate students and researchers working with teachers at Joyce Public School to develop traditional and digital literacies. It was one of the winners of the . The awards highlight outstanding individuals, projects and programs in TDSB schools. The project's second award, the , went to the team of teachers from Joyce Public School who are working with Lotherington and Jenson.

Left: Heather Lotherington

Over the past seven years, this school-based initiative has been developed as a result of Lotherington’s SSHRC grants. The most recent grant for Lotherington, on which Jenson is co-researcher, has created a dynamic learning community to research a multiliteracies approach to learning that incorporates traditional literacy, culture and heritage literacies, language literacies and current digital technology literacies. The project has produced a wealth of teacher and student learning projects, such as the multilingual digital video game “Talk Time” designed to help parents teach critical thinking to young children; a series of multilingual creative narratives; video clips such as “Imagine a World”; and student-created public service clips that address issues of social justice.

“I am delighted with this recognition of our evolving work, which belongs to all participating teachers, staff members, research assistants, researchers and the kids, who have created beautiful stories! We have worked together for many years to develop our learning community,” said Lotherington. “Two regular SSHRC awards and several minor grants later, the 91��ɫ-Joyce Public School partnership has expanded and evolved into a feature of the school. Our learning community is a model for both in-service professional development through collaborative action research and theory-building by translating cutting-edge theoretical concepts into classroom practice.”

Right: Jennifer Jenson

Also honoured was the team of Joyce Public School teachers and support staff who have been working with Lotherington and Jenson. The group received the 2010 Premier’s Award for Teaching Excellence – Team of the Year, given to a team made up of two to 10 individuals who have worked together to achieve a common goal.

Sixty-five per cent of the children at the school speak English as a second language and 90 per cent of the parents are from outside Canada. The teachers working with Lotherington and Jenson received the Premier's Award for their work on the multiliteracy projects that use digital technology and feature students and parents using personal experiences and first languages to reimagine popular stories.

Lotherington’s project "Researching New Literacies in the Multicultural Classroom: Developing a Ludic Approach to Linguistic Challenges in Elementary Education" received $125,788 from SSHRC in the 2007 competition. The research team continues to explore how teachers can teach socially responsive, immersive literacies in the contemporary multicultural, multilingual classroom.

For more information, visit the  Web site.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Vanessa Lamb (right), a second-year doctoral candidate in geography, is the 2010 Vivienne Poy Asian Research Award recipient. Her research interests include the politics of the environment and development, feminist political ecology and critical science studies.

Lamb received her master's degree from the University of Wisconsin, where she researched and studied the interdisciplinary understandings of conservation. Prior to attending 91��ɫ, she worked for the Bangkok-based organization TERRA, a regional non-governmental organization (NGO) that works on environmental issues within the Mekong Region. As a doctoral student she has worked as part of the Challenges of Agrarian Transition in Southeast Asia project team.

The award funds will assist Lamb in her dissertation fieldwork during the 2010-2011 academic year. Her research looks at knowledge-making and claim-making practices around resources of the Nu-Salween River, which supports an estimated six million people in China, Burma and Thailand as a source of livelihood and food. She will conduct interviews with local residents, activists, engineers and others connected to a large hydroelectric development project along the river at the Thai-Burma border. Specifically, her research will consider how different knowledges produced about the river interact and influence decision-making processes around development.

The award is named for Canadian Senator Vivienne Poy. It assists a graduate student in fulfilling the fieldwork requirement for the Graduate Diploma in Asian Studies.

Ei Phyu Han (left) and Rae Mitchell are the 2010 YCAR Language Award recipients. Han, a doctoral candidate in geography, will study Thai, while Mitchell, a master's candidate in social & political thought, will use the funding to study Hindi in anticipation of her 2010 fieldwork in India.

Han is examining gender identity formation of Karen refugees from Burma along the Thai-Burma border to learn how it is influenced by different actors and power groups at multiple sites of displacement. Her research aims to demonstrate how identity is influenced by place and therefore shifts during the process of being displaced because it is continually being renegotiated. This research has the potential to help improve resettlement programs, and she hopes it can play a role in future Canadian refugee policy changes.

"Although I am now a Canadian citizen, I migrated to Canada at the age of six from Burma with my family in the aftermath of the brutal repression of peaceful demonstrations in 1988," says Han. "I believe that this project is important not only for the ways that it can influence policy and resettlement program changes, and its engagement and contribution to academic knowledge, but also because it is integral to learning more about the growing humanitarian crisis in Burma."

She completed her coursework and set the foundations for her fieldwork in the summer of 2009 in Chiang Mai, Thailand, by making contacts with NGOs and by taking Thai language courses. The YCAR Language Award will assist in the continuation of these studies. She will begin her fieldwork this month working with the Thailand Burma Border Consortium, Women's Education for Advancement & Employment and the Karen Youth Organization.

Right: Rae Mitchell

Mitchell's research interests include resistance, social movement theory, engaged Buddhism and social anarchism. Her current research focuses on Gandhian perspectives of the body, including the methods utilized by Gandhi to transform his body (and self) from British subject into revolutionary satyagrahi. She's also interested in the ways that Gandhian approaches to social and political transformation are being adapted and utilized by female members of the Mahila Shanti Sena (Women's Peace Force) in Northern India.

She will complete a four-week intensive Hindi language-training course at the Jaipur School of Hindi in Jaipur, Rajasthan. The school is run in affiliation with Shashvat Sansthan, a local NGO working for the welfare of Rajasthan’s tribal-indigenous communities. Mitchell will also be travelling with University of Toronto Professor Reva Joshee and Jill Carr-Harris, a development worker in India, throughout central India for three weeks in October to explore possible research collaboration on Ekta Parishad's struggle for land and forest rights for marginalized and indigenous peoples in India.

Mitchell holds a combined bachelor of arts (BA) in peace studies and anthropology with a minor in religious studies from McMaster University.

The YCAR Language Award was created to support graduate students in fulfilling the language requirement for the Graduate Diploma in Asian Studies and to facilitate awardees master's or doctoral-level research.

Ferdinand Dionisio Caballero (left), a master's candidate in social anthropology, is this year's recipient of the David Wurfel Award. The award will aid him in his fall archival fieldwork in the Philippines where he will focus on the entangled relations between the Catholic Church and the Filipino people.

The David Wurfel Award provides financial support to an honours undergraduate or master's graduate student who intends to conduct thesis research on the topic of Filipino history, culture or society.

Caballero's major research paper will be an anthropological inquiry on religion, colonial subjects, post-colonialism and history. More specifically, he is interested in exploring and understanding the dynamics of power relations between religious institutions and the people.

He holds a BA in anthropology with a specialization in ethnographic studies from Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta.

The award was established in 2006 by Senior YCAR Research Associate David Wurfel. He wanted to contribute to the emergence of a new generation of Filipino leadership that is grounded in the country’s history, culture and public affairs. Wurfel is a Philippine specialist who received his PhD from Cornell University's Southeast Asia Program.

Heather Barnick (right) is the 2010 recipient of the Albert C.W. Chan Foundation Fellowship. A doctoral candidate in the Department of Social Anthropology at 91��ɫ, her current research interests are related to the anthropology of media, digital anthropology, and techno-science with a specific focus on the visual and material cultures of video games and massive multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs).

Last month, Barnick began ethnographic fieldwork in Shanghai, China, following the ways in which online role-playing games have become significant sites for the formations of new national and cultural imaginaries in mainland China. Her fieldwork is supported by the Albert C.W. Chan Fellowship and a Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada doctoral scholarship.

This research follows on the heels of a project initiated by China’s General Administration of Press & Publication (GAPP) to encourage the production of 100 domestically produced MMORPGs. The narratives and imagery integrated into games developed under GAPP’s initiative frequently make use of famous fictional stories, such as the Journey to the West, and historical battles, such as Genghis Khan’s exploits and the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Focusing on the perspectives of youth from Shanghai, Barnick’s research will examine how these adapted histories come to have new meanings for life in the present. The primary goal is to understand how notions of national and cultural belongings and identities are continuously formed, expressed and re-imagined by Shanghai youth through their participation in MMORPGs produced in China.

Barnick earned a BA in sociology and anthropology from the University of Prince Edward Island and a MA in social and cultural anthropology from Concordia University.

The Albert C.W. Chan Foundation Fellowship was established by the Albert C.W. Chan Foundation to encourage and assist 91��ɫ graduate students to conduct field research in East and/or Southeast Asia and was made possible through the support of the Albert C. W. Chan family.

Adnan Amin (left) was selected from a strong group of graduate and undergraduate applicants to represent 91��ɫ at the Global Initiatives Symposium in Taipei next month. This opportunity is provided by the government of the Republic of China (Taiwan).

Amin's winning essay, “When East Meets West: A Personal Essay on Intersections of North American and East Asian Education”, reflected on his experiences as an English as a second language (ESL) teacher in Taiwan.

Last year, Amin graduated from 91��ɫ with an honours double major degree in English and history, completed his concurrent bachelor of education degree, and held a position as student senator for the Faculty of Education Students' Association. Amin has also held an international internship in the English Department of the Hong Kong Institute of Education and taught ESL in Taiwan. He is currently pursing his master of education degree at 91��ɫ.

Amin's research interests are in teaching and learning strategies, immigrant experiences, English language learning and digital media technology. He currently works as a school settlement worker in Toronto high schools where he helps newcomer students and families with settlement needs.

The Global Initiatives Symposium will be held at the National Taiwan University in Taipei, Taiwan, from July 12 to 16. It will bring together emergent leaders from around the world to discuss critical global issues. The topic for 2010 is The Emergence of New Giants: Evolution or Revolution. Participants will also take part in several days of cultural tours in Taiwan following the symposium.

Amin’s opportunity to represent 91��ɫ at the symposium was made possible by the Taipei Economic & Cultural Office and the government of the Republic of China (Taiwan).

For more information on any of the awards, visit the YCAR Web site.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Playing video games for hours on end may prepare young Billy to become a laparoscopic surgeon one day, a study from 91��ɫ has shown.

The findings, published online in the journal , demonstrate that playing video games reorganizes the brain’s activity and can lead to better control of skilled movements. Alterations to the brain’s cortical network in young men who have significant experience playing video games gives them an advantage not only in playing the games, the study concludes, but in performing other dissociated visuomotor tasks.

The most common example of a dissociated visuomotor task – in which visual information received by the brain is dissociated from the required motor action – is using a mouse while focusing on a computer screen. A much more challenging dissociated visuomotor task would be performing laparoscopic surgery.

The study’s conclusion that using gaming skills can reorganize how the brain works also offers hope for future research into the problems experienced by patients with early Alzheimer’s disease, who struggle to complete the simplest visuomotor tasks.

Above: The study compared a group of avid video gamers with those who did not have the experience of playing. Using high-resolution brain imaging, researchers were able to test how skills learned from gaming can transfer to new tasks. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

The study compared a group of 13 young men in their 20s, who had played video games at least four hours a week for the previous three years and were very proficient, to a group of 13 young men who did not have that experience. After some training, the subjects were placed in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine and asked to do a series of increasingly difficult tasks, such as using a joystick or looking one way while reaching another way. The fMRI machine imaged cortical activity as their brains planned to do the tasks, so the results were not affected by any physical movement.

“By using high-resolution brain imaging (fMRI), we were able to actually measure which brain areas were activated at a given time during the experiment,” says Lauren Sergio (right), a professor in the School of Kinesiology & Health Science in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health.  “We tested how the skills learned from video game experience can transfer over to new tasks, rather than just looking at brain activity while the subject plays a video game.”

Sergio supervised the study by graduate student and lead author Joshua Granek (BSc. Spec. Hons. ’06, MSc. ’08), now a PhD student at 91��ɫ, and Diana Gorbet (MSc. ’02, PhD ’06), a PhD student at the time. All work in 91��ɫ’s .

The parietal cortex is the part of the brain that a person typically relies on most in complex eye-hand tasks to translate what he or she sees into an action, with less reliance on the prefrontal cortex. The study found that in experienced video gamers’ brains, there is increased activity in the prefrontal cortex.

“We had noticed differences in brain activity between two gamers and other subjects in an earlier pilot study. We decided to do a study with an fMRI because we were curious about the differences in brain activity between skilled gamers and people with much less experience,” says Granek. “The video gamers exhibited increased activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is at the very front of the brain. While performing the same task, the less-experienced players – the people in the control group – used predominantly the parietal cortex, farther back.”

In the future, it would be interesting to study if the brain pattern changes are affected by the type of video games a player has used and the actual total number of hours he has played, Granek says, and to study female video gamers, whose brain patterns in earlier studies were different than those of males.

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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