Ping Institute: Humanities Cafe

In 2026, the Ping Institute began a new initiative called “Humanities Cafe.” These short public talks are given on interesting humanities topics.

Past Cafes

2026

Queergaming, Asianfuturism, & Gaming while Asian, Feb. 26

Dr. Ed Chang, Associate Professor of English at Ohio University, gave an interactive presentation that weaved together:

1. An analysis of cultural and gamic tropes and stereotypes of Asian bodies, identities, and narratives in games and other speculative media.
2. Close playings of a range of analog and video games.
3. An autotheoretical acccount of growing up as a queer Asian American gamer in mostly straight, white, normative spaces.
4. Creative ways to play, desire, hope, and imagine alternative worlds. 

His presentation took up the call made by scholar-gamers like Kishonna L. Gray and David J. Leonard, who argue in the introduction of Woke Gaming about the need for games to make direct interventions in racist norms, to embrace resistance, and in their case, to center Blackness. The presentation imagined and interrogated what the centering of Asian American identities and experiences offers the study, development, consuming and playing of games and other mediums and reveals the personal, representational, and ludic ramifications of reading, writing, and "gaming while Asian."

Big Questions in the Declaration of Independence,” March 26

With Drs. Mariana Dantas, Fred Drogula, Charles Lester, and Vladimir Marchenkov