By Elizabeth Jones, 2nd year student, Global and International Studies
The 13th Annual Graduate Conference for the Department of Law and Legal Studies recently took place in Richcraft Hall. This conference was not only fun to attend, but the presenters were able to take certain subjects and topics that people usually yawn at and turned them into head-scratchers.
One of the afternoon panels, called “World Building”, was a prime example of this. This panel started with Michael Piok, whose presentation was on economic nationalism. He focused specifically on relations between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Next was Nicole Landry, who tackled the interesting topic of communism (or socialist left) and utopian thinking. She said that the social left needs to change from feeling helpless and needs to start setting goals so that wanted policies do not seem so theoretical and far away. She also talked about leftist memes, which was an interesting twist.
The last presentation was given by Sam Kwok, all about the famous game Dungeons and Dragons, or just D&D. The presentation focused mainly on the Dungeon Master (DM), who creates the playing world and ‘meaningful play’, as it was called. The interesting turn came when Sam made the connection between this game and the legal structure of today; connecting the DM to the judge, the rules one must follow, how these ‘game’ rules benefit both the judge and the ‘players’, and more.
All three of these panellists prompted many questions on topics such as power dynamics, the idea of ‘world building’, etc. This panel was incredibly interesting and not only presented good information for people to walk away with, but also gave them new ways to think about and approach subjects.
Monday, March 18, 2019 in FPA Research Series, General, Research
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