4/10/2008

I really should update this more often! Overall things have been going well. I presented at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference, at a Mellon workshop at UCR, and had a paper accepted for publication in Games and Culture. I will also be presenting at MLA this December. I am currently in my last quarter of coursework and planning my exams. It looks like I will be testing in Cultural Studies, Rhetoric, and Digital Media with a focus on technics and gaming. I also started a blog to track my exam and dissertation progress. Feel free to visit!

9/21/2007

FINALLY received my schedule for next year. Teaching an English 4 class as opposed to what I had expected. I will also be participting in Media Commons: In Media Res project on September 24, which is exciting. I really like the website and concept. Every day a scholar posts a video they find interesting with a small write up meant to spark discussion. My piece is entitled "Lrn2Play Noob: Progressive Masculinity in Games" and will be a machinima video from WOW that I have written about in an essay for Vorris Nunley.

8/1/2007

I passed my M.A. exam which was a really positive experience. My committee was composed of Toby Miller (chair) and Vorris Nunley. I will be beginning the Ph.D. program at UCR in September. I am currently enrolled in a course on Marxist theory taught by Carole Fabricant and another course on Posthuman sexuality taught by Carol Anne Tyler. Not quite sure what I will be teaching next year, but it looks to be either English 1A or 1C. This summer I have been concerned with getting a few essays out for consideration in journals and sending abstracts to conferences. I also, as always, have been juggling a number of creative projects and have been slowly making progress on them.

4/29/2007

I have been incredibly busy lately with a host of various projects and happenings. I organized and presented on a panel about Race and Video Games at the (dis)junctions conference at UCR. It was truly a great experience and I was pleased with the outcome. Awesome presenters and great conversation with a decent-sized and perceptive audience. The next night I helped coordinate the CINtax film festival which was a lot of fun. Since then I have been leveling my rogue in WOW and preparing for my Masters exam which is taking place on May 14 or 15.

10/20/2006

I just received a copy of The Meaning and Culture of Grand Theft Auto: Critical Essays which I have a chapter in on violence. This is my first academic publication and its rather exciting. The book looks great and has a really diverse collection of perspectives, all at just the right length for quick and satisfying reading. It is also, according the jacket, the first academic book to cover a single game. So please buy it and make me famous or infamous, either works.

10/15/2006

Still working on the content to the website. I hopefully will have it done by late November. In other news, I received word that I will be presenting the paper I am currently trying to get published on blackness in MMORPGs at the iDMAa conference in November. This is pretty exciting because its my first refereed conference and there should be a very pronounced industry, rather than academic, presence. Now if I could just get the paper in a journal I would feel completely satisfied with this project. It is definitely the work I am most proud of doing to date and I think in this paper I really have something of value to bring to the conversation on races and games.

10/03/2006

Thanks to some help from an outside party I have officially finished the coding that I wanted to accomplish for the site and I think it is ready to launch even if some things are unfinished. Unfortunately, I am having trouble figuring out how to image map the content images of the site so I can insert links and such. I am not sure it is even possible to layer image maps on Javascript image switching images. Anyone know how? If you do float me an email.

09/28/2006

Started teaching my English 1A "Beginning Composition" class today. It is quite a lot of work to prepare for but I am looking forward to the task. It appears I have a good group of students and it is also fulfulling to teach people how to write. I am really hoping to stamp my signature on the course too, with various injections of media into the class. I already have plans to listen to some William Basinski, watch the wonderful typographic film Beautiful World and screen Fight Club. We'll see how things progress.

9/24/2006

I just began working on the website.