A Big Announcement

Posted 00:00, Thu, 14 Feb 2008

I use this blog space for general news about me and what I'm doing, so I'm very pleased to use it now to announce some rather big news: I got a job! This Fall I'll be joining the English Department at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, VA. I'm very honored that they extended me an offer, and overall I couldn't be more pleased with the department, the faculty and the students I'll be working with. I realize I'll miss some things about being a grad student, but this job will be the fulfillment of many years of work. I can't wait to get started.

A Return to the Classroom

Posted 00:00, Wed, 21 Nov 2007

Since I've been on Alumni Fellowship, I have not been required (or able) to teach as often or regularly as I'd like. For this reason, I am very excited that I have been given an opportunity to teach an upper division undergrad course in Spring 2008. The course title and number is LIT 3003 - Forms of Narrative, and it has most recently been taught by Terry Harpold and Donald Ault. According to its catalog description, LIT 3003 is meant to provide an introduction to theories of narrative while exploring various kinds of narrative in different media. My approach, which I'm calling Archaeologies of Story, will be to study narrative by examining texts which may or may not be narrative -- border cases, in other words.

The advantage of this approach is that it forces us to examine and possibly re-evaluate definitions of what a narrative is. Perhaps not surprisingly, we'll spend some time with the ludology debate and also look at hypertext fiction, interactive fiction, and alternate reality games. I'm using the term "archeology" here to highlight another angle of intended approach: situating material histories in contemporary contexts. In practice, this will mean that as we examine a given text, prodding and dissecting it to discover and describe its narrative behavior, we will also pay attention to the layers of technological and medial discourse underlying (or overlaying) the text with structures of historically specific meaning.

Obviously, I'm looking forward to it.

An Article About ARGs (Featuring Me)

Posted 00:00, Fri, 13 Apr 2007

Today's edition of the Independent Alligator (UF's main student newspaper) published an article about Alternate Reality Gaming, and it's got a picture of me in it. Much of the article is about my experience recently playing Monster Hunter Club a.k.a. Unnatural Selection. I feel kind of silly about the whole thing, but any press is good press, I suppose. Actually, the reporter, Jessica Coleman, did a pretty nice job and got some good quotes from Dave Szulborski. She also talked to a local ILB veteran and a Perplex City afficianado. Here's a PDF of the article.

Onward

Posted 00:00, Tue, 13 Mar 2007

Well, I've made it through my 2-presentations-in-one-week craziness, and I think both came out really pretty well. I've written a postlude for the Game Studies Conference, and a report on SCMS. Of course, now that these two things are behind me, there's more and more to do. Most notably, we've received a contract for Playing the Past, so I now have a lot of work to do to get that ready.

Some Upcoming Presentations

Posted 00:00, Thu, 22 Feb 2007

The next few weeks are going to be pretty busy for me. On Friday, March 2, I'll be presenting a paper called "Lost in Emulation: Worlds of Difference in Videogame Typography" at the 3rd annual UF Game Studies conference, World Building: Space and Community. I'm on a panel with Tof Eklund and Scott Reed.

Then, on the next weekend, I'll be flying to Chicago for the SCMS Annual conference to give a paper on "Heads-Up Display, Text, and the Videogame Interface" on a "Video Game Mechanics" panel with Robert Buerkle, David Parisi, and Christopher Hanson.

Should be fun -- busy, but fun.