Despite the outsized influence of technology on everyday cultural practices and classrooms, its role has never been more contested. Indeed, even in the case that such practices are not digitized, our societal roles are increasingly governed by systemic
expectations, rules, and algorithms. These expectations create hierarchies, enforce boundaries, and classify individuals and their work.

This conference seeks to uncover techniques and ideologies behind this shift, particularly through the valence of games, gaming, and interactive technology. Such research, collaboration, and debate are more urgent now than ever. Rhetoric and practices of surveillance, gamification, and instrumentation threaten the creative and critical power of the postsecondary classroom space and the very playfulness of games as a medium. What assumptions underlie the digital systematization of our personal and professional lives, in contrast to the liberating power of digital connectivity? How might technology (digital and analog) transform or challenge perceptions, rather than reinforcing the status quo?
We welcome individual submissions as well as submissions for panels. As this conference intends to evoke partnership across institutional boundaries, we are especially interested in proposals which highlight institutional challenges and collaborations around technology and games both nationally and internationally. As such, we welcome inter/multidisciplinary submissions from the humanities as well as the social, technical, and physical sciences. We are open to online or hybrid panels, and we especially welcome interactive, experiential, or pedagogical presentations. This conference will be hosted in the UK Esports Lounge, which supports a variety of creative presentation modes and modalities.

We are particularly interested in proposals which attend to the following:

Bridging the boundaries between digital/analog, pedagogy/leisure, and disciplinary spheres.
Social and cultural factors of games in the classroom
Interactive pedagogies beyond gamification
Practices that engender liberation and curiosity in the classroom
Comparative studies of the use of interactive technologies internationally

The conference will take place February 27th and 28th in the UKFCU Esports Theatre in The Cornerstone (401 S Limestone, Lexington, KY). We are also pleased to be hosting a Keynote Address by Dr. Ashlee Bird, Assistant Professor at Notre Dame. Abstracts, prepared for anonymous review, should be no longer than 500 words for individual talks, and 1,000 words for panels. Individual presentations should be no longer than twenty minutes, while panels should be no longer than forty-five minutes. The deadline for submission is midnight January 2nd. Please send abstracts, and any other questions, to
nash.meade@uky.edu.

A special thanks to the Gaines Center for the Humanities for providing funding for this conference through their University of Kentucky Research Cooperatives programs. An additional thank you to the departments of English, Educational Policy Studies,
WRD, and Information Sciences, as well as UKOnline and SmartCampus, for supporting this project.