MC Research Areas
Emerging media and technology; Media, identity and representation; Popular communication; The media industry, laws and policies

Adrienne Shaw is an Associate Professor in Temple University's Department of Media Studies and Production and a member of the Lew Klein College of Media and Communication graduate faculty. She is also affiliate faculty in Temple’s Gender Sexuality and Women Studies program.

In 2019-2020 she will serve as interim director of Temple's new Graduate Certificate in Cultural Analytics. Prior to joining Temple she was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Colorado State University, a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh, and Postdoctoral Scholar at the Mudra Institute for Communication Ahmedabad (India).

Shaw is author of Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture (winner of the 2016 International Communication Association's Popular Communications Division's Book Award). She has co-edited three anthologies: Queer Game Studies (2017, University of Minnesota Press), Queer Technologies: Affordances, Affect, Ambivalence (2017, Routledge), and Interventions: Communication Research and Practice (2018, Peter Lang). She is also the founder of the LGBTQ Game Archive and co-curator of Rainbow Arcade, the world's first exhibit of LGBTQ game history (Dec 2018-May 2019 in Berlin, Germany). The Rainbow Arcade catalog can be purchased here. From 2011 to 2015 she was also part of the multi-million dollar and award winning CYCLES project, which developed games to train users to identify and mitigate cognitive biases. A full list of her publications is available via Google Scholar.

Presently, Shaw is leading the committee to bring the Association of Internet Researcher’s Annual Conference to Philadelphia in 2021. Shaw is also a co-editor of New York University Press's Critical Cultural Communication book series, an associate editor for the Journal of Communication, and serves on editorial/review boards for International Journal of Cultural Studies; Media, Culture, & Society; Critical Studies in Media Communication; Game Studies; and Not Your Mama’s Gamer.

Publications 

Books/Anthologies/Catalogs

Shaw, A., Rudolph, S., and Schnorrenberg, J. (2019). Rainbow Arcade: Over 30 years of queer video game history. Berlin: Schwules Museum/winterwork.

Shaw, A., & Scott, D.T. (Eds.). (2018). Interventions: Communication Research and Practice. New York: Peter Lang.

Sender, K., & Shaw, A. (Eds.). (2017) Queer Technologies: Affordances, affects, ambivalence. New York, NY: Routledge.

Ruberg, B., & Shaw, A. (Eds.). (2017). Queer Game Studies. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Shaw, A. (2014). Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and gender and the margins of gamer culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Select Recent Journal Articles

Shaw, A., Lauteria, E.W., Yang, H., Persaud, C.J., Cole, A.M. (2019). Counting Queerness in Games: Trends in LGBTQ digital game representation 1985-2005. International Journal of Communication 13: 1544-1569.

Shaw, A., McKernan, B., Martey, R., Stromer-Galley, J., Saulnier, E., McLaren, E., Rhodes, M., Folkestad, J., Taylor, S., Kenski, K., Clegg, B., Strzalkowski, T. (2018). Analyzing iterative training game design: A multi-method postmortem analysis of CYCLES Training Center and CYCLES Carnivale. Multimodal Technologies and Interaction 2(3): 46. Retrieved from http://www.mdpi.com/2414-4088/2/3/46http://www.mdpi.com/2414-4088/2/3/46

Shaw, A. (2018). Are we there yet? The politics and practices of intersectional game studies. The Velvet Light Trap 81: 76-80.

Shaw, A. (2017). Encoding and decoding affordances: Stuart Hall and interactive media technologies. Media, Culture, and Society 39(4): 592-602. DOI: 10.1177/0163443717692741

Martey, R., Shaw, A., Stromer-Galley, J., Kenski, K., Clegg, B.A., Folkestad, J.E., Saulneir, T., Strzalkowski, T. (2017). Testing the power of game lessons: The effects of art style and narrative complexity on reducing cognitive bias. International Journal of Communication 11: 1635-1660.

Shaw, A. (2017). Diversity without defense: Reframing arguments for diversity in games. Kinephanos. July: 54-76. Retrieved from http://www.kinephanos.ca/Revue_files/2017_Shaw.pdf

Shaw, A. (2017). What’s next?: The LGBTQ video game archive. Critical Studies in Media Communication 34(1): 88-94.

Recent Book Chapters

Shaw, A. (2019). Leisure Suit Larry and LGBTQ representation. In N. Huntemann & M. Payne (Eds.), How to Play Video Games (pp. 110-117). New York, NY: NYU Press.

Shaw, A., Sender, K., & Murphy, P. (2018). Critical Audience Studies. In Oxford Encyclopedia of Communication and Critical Studies. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.619

Shaw, A. (2017).  Beyond sex and romance: LGBTQ representation in games and the Grand Theft Auto series. In P. Messaris & L. Humphreys (Eds.) Digital Media: Transformations in Human Communication (2nd Edition) (pp. 205-212). New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Personal Website

adrienneshaw.com

Presentations

Keynotes/Invited Talks

Shaw, A. (2019, November). Invited Speaker: Queer Game Day. Swarthmore College. Swarthmore, PA.

Shaw, A. (2019, October). Visiting Scholar: Interactive Media Department and Common Ground student organization. Bradley University. Peoria Illinois.

Shaw, A. (2019, February). Invited speaker: ATEC Dean’s Colloquium series distinguished guest. University of Texas-Dallas. Dallas, TX.

Shaw, A. (2018, November). Invited Panelist: Gender and Games. Digital Humanities Symposium. William and Mary College. Richmond, VA.

Shaw, A. (2018, August). Keynote. Defining queerness in games. Games and Literary Theory. IT University of Copenhagen. Copenhagen, Denmark.

Shaw, A. (2018, May). Invited Panelist: Queer Gaming Panel. Queer Play and the Ways Forward Exhibit. Institute for Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA.

Shaw, A. (2018, April). Have we made a difference? (Making a) Difference in Gaming digital colloquium. Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, Vanderbilt University.

Shaw, A. (2018, March). Diving into the LGBTQ Game Archive. The Center for Computer Games Research. IT University of Copenhagen. Copenhagen, Denmark.

Selected Recent Conference Presentations

Shaw, A. (2019, May). Presenter. Boredom, frustration, failure, and anger: Making sense of nonpleasurable game play. International Communication Association. Washington, D.C.

Shaw, A. and Persaud, C. (2018, October). Presenter. Beyond Canon: Reading Queerness in Community. Association of Internet Researchers Annual Conference. Montreal, Canada.

Shaw, A. (2018, September). Presenter. A qualitative study of transmasculinity in the games industry and games journalism. Queerness and Games Conference. Montreal, Canada.

Shaw, A. (2018, July). Presenter. What isn’t a Game? Digital Game Researcher Association Conference. Turin, Italy.

Cole, A.M., Shaw, A., and Zammit, J. (2017, July). Presenter. Representations of Queer Identity in Games from 2013–2015. Digital Game Researcher Association Conference. Melbourne, Australia.

Shaw, A. (2017, May). Exhibitor. LGBTQ Game Archive. Making and Doing Exhibition, International Communication Association Preconference. San Diego, CA.

Shaw, A. (2017, May). Presenter. Playing Queerness Across Time and Space: The Mobile Mutability of LGBTQ Game Content. International Communication Association Annual Conference. San Diego, CA.

Shaw, A., Lauteria, E., Persaud, C. and Cole, A. (2017, May). Presenter. Analyzing Trends in LGBTQ Digital Game Representation. International Communication Association Annual Conference. San Diego, CA.

Awards

Klein College Faculty Research Award (2018)

Higher Education Video Game Alliance Fellow (2018; lifetime appointment)

Temple Digital Scholarship Center Faculty Fellowship (2016-2017)

Outstanding Book Award for Gaming at the Edge from the Popular Communication Division of the International Communication Association (2016)

Gold Medal for CYCLES Carnivale, International Serious Play Awards (2015)

Top Interactive Paper Award, Feminist Scholarship Division, International Communication Association (2015)

Junior Faculty Teaching Award, School of Media and Communication, Temple University (2014)