A long report by Scott Carlson on the status of computer gaming in the contemporary U.S. academy appeared in the August 15, 2003 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education; the main focus of the article was upon James Gee's influential research into the learning strategies engendered by computer game-play. Reactions to the topic were unusually charged, circulating as they did around the question of whether or not the massive contemporary popularity of computer games has resulted in significant intellectual decline among children. One English professor interviewed for the article was especially irascible, reportedly describing his own game-loving students as "ignorant, unsophisticated, uncreative, and shameless," and observing of Professor Gee: "'If this guy thinks that playing some goddamn video game is the equivalent of memorizing a Shakespeare soliloquy, that's crazy.'"

While the vehemence of these sentiments might be exceptional, their general thrust is in fact quite familiar: it reproduces the starkest polarities of the so-called "culture wars" of twenty years ago, pitting the tried-and-true (often in the unlikely form of a beleaguered, under-appreciated Shakespeare) against supposedly inferior and gimmicky emerging knowledges.

The subjects of debate have shifted in the last twenty years, so that the imagined threat to Shakespeare (rather than being located in the study of gender, sexuality, race, or nation, as it was during the 1980s) presently takes the form of computer gaming and other kinds of interactive textuality. This, in its turn, has added unexpected complexities to the old arguments, for computer games are largely viewed to be the exclusive (and aggressively exclusionary) domain of "geeky boys" or "twentysomething white male[s]." (Zimmerman, Heller) They tend, as such, to be viewed with distaste-or worse-by commentators on the right and on the left.

Within this polarized, volatile context, it is quite remarkable that the study of children's culture has managed to fashion itself over the last two decades into a thriving, provocative, and energetic interdisciplinary field, a field whose influence at USC extends throughout the College and across several of the professional schools. USC, as it turns out, is one of the best places around to study children's culture in an interdisciplinary, international, and feminist frame. Of course the University benefits from the lucky geographical convergence of its Pacific Rim location (Japanese youth culture has wielded enormous international influence in all of the arts, including game design, during the two decades) and its proximity to the centers of the U.S. entertainment industry (including Disneyland). Institutionally, as well, USC has drawn widespread attention with the formation of its MFA program in Interactive Media.

In the context of gender/sexuality scholarship at USC, moreover, the study of children's culture is hardly a newfangled concern. Longtime USC-

based innovators in the study of gender, sexuality, and children's culture include Marsha Kinder (Critical Studies), James Kincaid (English), Lynn Spigel (formerly of Critical Studies, now at Northwestern), and Barrie Thorne (formerly of Sociology and SWMS, now at UC Berkeley), all of whom have been at the vanguard of these discussions for many years. More recent arrivals to USC who are also making major contributions include Sara Banet-Weiser (Annenberg), Elaine Bell-Kaplan (Sociology), Janine Fron (Institute for Multimedia Literacy), Tracy Fullerton (Interactive Media), Lucia Hodgson (English/graduate program), Mizuko Ito (Anthropology), Tara McPherson (Critical Studies), Michael Messner (Sociology and Gender Studies), Ellen Seiter (Critical Studies), and Douglas Thomas (Annenberg).

CFR has attempted during the last two years to showcase these considerable (if far-flung) resources by hosting a broad, diverse range of scholars and culture-workers who have contributed to the critical analysis and production of children's culture: these include experimental "young adult" fiction-writer Francesca Lia Block, who gave a reading from her new work; award-winning photographer Lauren Greenfield, whose "Girl Culture" exhibition is presently on show at the Skirball; Celia Pearce from UC Irvine, who spoke about gender and gaming at a CFR research luncheon two years ago; and the "Just Gaming" collective, an international group that includes several faculty affiliates from USC, including Banet-Weiser, Ito, Seiter, and Thomas, whom CFR hosted for an informal day-long session last spring.

This year at the Center we have concentrated more closely upon the topic, and we are currently in the midst of a year-long series of events bringing to campus a range of L.A.-based innovators, as well as highlighting the work of several currently on our faculty. During fall semester, two of our key events (cosponsored by the Annenberg School, the Critical Studies Division of CNTV, and the English Department) have helped to bring the topic into focus. First, as a provocative kick-off to the series, Raina Lee from the independently-published magazine 1-Up came to campus to give a rousing talk about feminist and anti-racist possibilities for a new kind of gaming journalism that she is in the process of inventing; she titled the talk "Gaming Journalism is Boring, so Do Your Own Instead!" News of Lee's visit, which was covered in the Daily Trojan, was picked up by several gaming sites, and visitors launched into lively web-based discussions about girls' and women's relationship to mainstream gaming practices.

Lee was followed by Marsha Kinder, who along with project collaborators Mark Harris (CNTV) and designer Kristy Kang (of the Labyrinth Project) gave a demonstration of a video game titled "Runaways" that Kinder - always ahead of the curve - conceived and created during the late 1990s. Other plans in the works include a talk by Jane Pinckard (who maintains the website www.gamegirladvance.com); a repeat visit by members of the Just

Gaming collective; co-sponsporship (with primary sponsorship by the Center for Visual Anthropology) of a conference on children's culture in Japan; a return appearance by Raina Lee, who will conduct a zine-writing workshop; and visits by working feminist game designers who (like Kinder) have done innovative work both on the scholarship and the production of electronic games.

When these events got underway several semesters ago, they struck even me as somewhat eccentric: I sincerely doubt, for example, that CFR had ever before hosted a writer working in the long-derided category of "young adult" fiction, and I was concerned about how audiences would respond. Over time, however, this serendipitous and admittedly playful undertaking has developed into the best-attended, most passionately engaged cluster of events that we have hosted on campus over the course of the last two-and-a-half years, drawing together scholars, artists, and audiences who might otherwise (because of their diverse disciplinary affiliations and chaotic schedules) rarely come into contact with each other. Although I certainly do not share the cultural politics of the Shakespeare-loving English professor whom I quoted in my opening paragraph, I do share his sense-so apparent in the testiness of his comments to the Chronicle-that emerging practices of child-play are having a major impact upon the way in which contemporary knowledge is shaped, extended, and organized. The exacting, imaginative critical consideration that child-play has received from gender studies scholars across this campus provides some of the best available evidence for this.

Meanwhile, last I heard, Shakespeare scholarship was doing just fine, having been considerably enriched since the early 1980s by contributions from scholars working on precisely the questions of race, gender, sexuality, and nation that many had predicted as his undoing. (Recent experiments in electronic textuality, it should be noted, are also invigorating the field in important ways.) With greater frequency, also, feminist cultural observers are turning their attention to the kinds of play practice in which girls and women have engaged, and continue to engage, on the computer screen and elsewhere. We hope that you will join us, and have some serious fun, when the series starts up again in the spring semester.

(Further resources: Henry Jenkins' The Children's Culture Reader includes contributions by Kincaid, Seiter, Spigel, and Thorne; an interview with Marsha Kinder appears in From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, ed. Henry Jenkins and Justine Cassell; 1-Up magazine is distributed locally by Meltdown Comics and by the Giant Robot store. See also Scott Carlson, "Can Grand Theft Auto Inspire Professors?" in The Chronicle of Higher Education, 8/15/03, pp. A31-33; Steven Heller, "Interview with Eric Zimmerman," in Print, July/August 2003, pp.34-35.)

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