Dany Guay-Bélanger

Supervisors:

Prof. Andrew Johnston and Prof. Shawn Graham

Academic Interests:

American foreign policy; popular culture; videogaming; religion; gender; public history; war on terror; cold war; imperialism;

Select Publications and Current Projects:

Kate Abarbanel, Ashlie Bienvenu, Sara Breitkreutz, Mikayla Cartwright, Gregory Coulter, Rebecca De Sanctis, Mitchell Edwards, Linda Fitzgibbon, Leah Girardo, Dany Guay-Bélanger, Steven High, Alexandra Lantosh, Phil Lichti, Ivana Mormina, Shaghayegh Shirinbab, Pharo Sok, Elizabeth Tabakow, Karoline Truchon, Jennifer Wicks and Jeff Yakimchuk, La Pointe: De L’autre Bord de la Track/ On the Other side of the Tracks, Montreal: Center for Oral History and Digital Storytelling, 2015.

Teaching Experience:

Introduction to World History (A. Diptee), Fall 2016

Description of Research:

My research aims at revealing common threads in the representation and rhetoric of the Vietnam War and the Global War on Terror in video games. In order to do so, I investigate the material relationship between game producers, the Pentagon and military contractors, and how this fits in the pre-existing relations between the department of defence and the entertainment industry; the technological overlap of gaming and drone warfare; and gender, by researching how women and masculinity are historically portrayed in American political discourse and in video games. Furthermore, I intend to conduct oral history interviews of game makers to understand how they perceive their role in producing war-themed games.