“Games of Archiving Queerly: Artefact Collection and Defining Queer Romance in Gone Home and Life is Strange.” Alphaville Journal of Film and Screen Media 15 (Winter 2018).
Abstract: The medium of video games often fails to depict queerness with positive representations. To combat the harmful stereotypes or optional queerness in the medium, I advocate for an application of queer archival methodologies to define and locate queerness in gaming. Queer archiving, with a focus on emotions, trauma, establishment of identity, and multimodality, pairs well with the digital nature of video games. Gone Home (2013) and Life Is Strange (2015), two video games with narratives reliant on the developing romantic relationships between teenage girls, grant us examples in which the inclusion of queerness is reliant on such archiving. Within each game, players gather artefacts to compile archives. In turn, these archives create irrefutable spaces in which queer content is included.
Book Chapter of ““Said Some Things I Definitely (Don’t) Regret”: Rhetorical Silences in American Vandal.” Bad Is the New Good: Criminals as Heroes in Popular Culture, edited by Kathryn Lane and Roxie James, Palgrave, 2019.
Abstract: In this chapter, I analyze how the intersections of communication across gender and race foster different considerations of the heroic criminal in American Vandal, the Peabody-winning and Emmy-nominated Netflix satire of true-crime documentaries. American Vandal interacts differently with its male and female “vandals,” almost all of whom, despite varying levels of wickedness, remain heroes to the narrative and the broader cultural conversations prompted. In short, men create assumed and proven guilt by oversharing, but their lovable natures and dim-witted reactions foster a pathos connection in the viewer, making them heroes. Women, in contrast, are suspicious when silent, but remain sympathetic and ethical when their motivations to commit crime come to light.
““That is the Truth”: Defining Aspasian Rhetoric as Enigmatic in History and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.” Article submission to Peitho.
Abstract: Aspasia left no recorded words behind, her voice represented only in adaptations from fifth century B.C.E. onward. Rhetoric continuously grapples with how to position Aspasia and define her. Popular examples of Aspasia range from a parody utilized by Plato to a genuinely savvy rhetor aware of the numerous constraints she’s located within. Sifting through such reports, I contend an alternate definition of Aspasian rhetoric that allows diverse readings and forthcoming adaptations: Aspasian rhetoric is enigmatic. I apply the concept of enigmatic Aspasian rhetoric to the 2018 video game, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, in which she stars. Initially posed as a clever ally, Aspasia is revealed as the leader of a cult that rules the Greek world. Capable of persuasion, leadership, and epideictic rhetoric, the game ultimately acknowledges Aspasian rhetoric cannot be defined as anything but enigmatic.
Renee Ann Drouin 