Reconfiguring the Portrait, edited by Abraham Gell and Tomáš Jirsa, is freshly out from Edinburgh University Press. It includes my co-authored chapter with Kaisu Hynnä-Granberg, titled Iiu Susiraja: self-shooting as playful practice. Focusing on the Instagram presence of the Finnish artist Iiu Susiraja in particular, our chapter explores the playful aspects of her work while also engaging in relations between self-portraits and selfies, body aesthetics, and the critical edge of ambiguity. The piece was a joy to write and we hope it does some justice to the general mood of Susiraja’s art.
Category Archives: play
Iiu Susiraja
Filed under academic pleasures, feminist media studies, humor, play
multiplatform 2022: corporealities
Multiplatform 2022: Corporealities, a Conference on Bodies and Embodiment in Games at the Manchester Metropolitan Game Centre has been moved online due to pending rail strikes. Should you be interested in my keynote on sex, play and networked pleasures on Friday, June 23, Zoom is now an option.
Filed under academic pleasures, media studies, play, sexuality
short-lived Play
As part of our recently finished research project, Sexuality and Play in Media Culture, Laura Saarenmaa and I explored Leikki (Play), a mid-1970s Finnish sex magazine for women. This lead us to consider popular sex ed of the era, feminist affiliations and methodological challenges. The outcome is now out as “Short-Lived Play: Trans-European Travels in Print Sex Edutainment”, on open access with Media History. And here’s the abstract:
Media history is still written largely from national perspectives so that the role of import and export, translations and franchises is seldom foregrounded. On geographically and linguistically limited markets, imported materials have nevertheless been crucial parts of popular print culture. This paper explores the market of ‘sex edutainment’ magazines in 1970s Finland, zooming specifically in on Leikki (‘Play’, 1976), a sex magazine for women translated from the Norwegian Lek (first launched in 1971) that provided knowledge on topics ranging from marriage to masturbation and lesbian desire. Through contextual analysis of Leikki, a marginal publication that has basically faded from popular memory, this article attends to ephemeral and even failed print media in order to account for the heterogeneity of the 1970s sex press market as it intermeshed with sex advice and education. In so doing, it adds new perspectives to a field largely focused on successful periodicals and addresses knowledge gaps resulting from the exclusion of the sex press from mainstream media historiography.
Filed under academic pleasures, feminist media studies, media studies, play, sexuality
Finnish fuck games
A chapter I co-wrote with the excellent, recently ERC-grant-winning Veli-Matti Karhulahti on Finnish DIY “fuck games” is freshly out in Perspectives on the European Videogame, edited by Víctor Navarro-Remesal and Óliver Pérez-Latorre for Amsterdam University Press. Our chapter, “Finnish Fuck Games: A Lost Historical Footnote” examines the games Strip-tease Ventti, Helttaa Helmaan, Bepa Quest, and Koulu3, all designed in the 1980s and 1990s, and their young male homosocial contexts of creation and use. This is one of the collaborations emerging from the recently finished research project, Sexuality and Play in Media Culture (2017-2021) that I was the PI of.
Filed under academic pleasures, media studies, NSFW, play
books, books, books, forthcoming
I’ve described my past few years as exceptionally crazy work-wise and it’s not just a figment of my melodramatic imagination. Many Splendored Things (2018) and NSFW (2019, with Kylie Jarrett and Ben Light) were both mainly written in 2017. We coined the prospectus for Who’s Laughing Now? Feminist Tactics in Social Media with Jenny Sundén in December 2017, wrote it in 2018-2019, and the book will be out this November. The proposal for Objectification: On the Difference Between Sex and Sexism with Feona Attwood, John Mercer, Alan McKee and Clarissa Smith was done two years ago and the actual thing is due out August. Last but not least, Dependent, Distracted, Bored: Affective Formations in Networked Media, for which I started collecting material back in 2012, has a due-date for March. One book already has a cover (with Barbie! and glitter!), am looking forward to the other designs materializing.
reviews for Many Splendored Things
Out a year ago, Many Splendored Things is being read by game scholars, which is fantastic. Adding to the thrill, some of them like it. Recent reviews are out from Ashley Darrow for the Manchester Game Studies Network and from Miguel Sicart for a WiderScreen special issue on sex and play. I’m taking Sicart’s definition of this being “one of the most important books on play” as an objective fact.
Filed under academic pleasures, affect theory, play, sexuality
games, and play!
In a surprising turn of events, I will get to interact with game studies galore during the coming academic year. In October, I’ll be keynote for the 13th Philosophy of Computer Games conference, “Aesthetics of Computer Games” in St. Petersburg and, next June, at DiGRA 2020, “Play is Everywhere”, in Tampere. Very exciting, and just a tad intimidating, given that I am no game studies scholar. But I’ll play!
Filed under academic pleasures, play
sexual cultures programme is out!
Voilà, at https://blogit.utu.fi/sexualcultures/programme/, you can witness the excitement that the 3rd Sexual Cultures Conference: Play, May 28-29, is going to be. Should you miss out, urgent FOMO can be fought by hanging onto Twitter backchannels with #sexcult19, but that won’t be the same, really. So, see you in Turku!
Filed under NSFW, play, porn studies, sexuality
reviews for Many Splendored Things
Sooner than expected! Out in October, my Many Splendored Things: Thinking Sex and Play has already been reviewed, not once, but twice — apparently with more to follow. Voilà, Katherine Angel for Times Higher Education (behind paywall) and João Florêncio for Theory, Culture & Society. Always a thrill to be read.
Filed under affect theory, cultural studies, media studies, play, sexuality
realities and fantasies
Should you be in Amsterdam April 10-12, join us for the ASCA workshop Realities and Fantasies: Relations, Transformations, Discontinuities. A hugely rich 3-day program, including my keynote, “Thinking Sex, Thinking Play”. Fun times ahead!
Filed under cultural studies, feminist media studies, play, sexuality
Susanna Paasonen 