24 November 2016 | 14.00 | ISCAP
ABSTRACT
At first sight, Bioware’s critically and commercially successful role playing game series, Mass Effect, takes its place as one more Canadian text supporting multicultural respect. Like many space operas in which different species (called “races”) are encountered and cooperated with or opposed, there is constant questioning of cultural practices and values. The games insistently valorize respect in the consideration of these other cultures. However, this apparently sensitive treatment of difference can be seen, in a less sympathetic reading, to be using some of the conventions of the space opera to avoid certain aspects of cultural politics which have proven resistant to the generally self-congratulatory discourses which circulate in Canada. This seminar will accordingly read Mass Effect’s universe in terms of its politics of cultural hierarchy, value and difference.
Bionote
David Callahan is Associate Professor of English at the University of Aveiro. He works mostly in the area of postcolonial studies across a range of cultures and texts. His articles on postcolonial issues have appeared in journals such asInterventions, Postcolonial Studies, Literature & History, Critique, English Studies in Africa, and Studies in Australasian Cinema, along with book chapters on subjects such as South African film, CSI, Native American writing, and Fiction for Children on East Timor. Most current research focuses on the processing of the history of East Timor across a variety of discourses.