Bo Ruberg | |
---|---|
Awards | Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Stonewall Book Award (2021), SCMS Anne Friedberg Innovative Scholarship Award (2022) |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of California Berkeley |
Academic work | |
Institutions | University of California Irvine |
Main interests | video games,Queer theory,Cultural Studies |
Notable works | Video Games Have Always Been Queer (2019),The Queer Games Avant-Garde (2020),Sex Dolls at Sea:Imagined Histories of Sexual Technologies (2022) |
Bo Ruberg (born 1985) is an American game studies scholar and professor at the University of California,Irvine in the department of Film and Media Studies. [1] They are known for their work on queer theory and video games. They are the author of Video Games Have Always Been Queer,The Queer Games Avant-Garde,and Sex Dolls at Sea:Imagined Histories of Sexual Technologies,as well as the editor of Queer Game Studies. From 2023 to 2027,they are the co-editor-in-chief,with Liz Elcessor,of the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies . They are also one of the co-founders of the Queerness in Games Conference.
Ruberg received their Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California at Berkeley.
Ruberg's academic work focuses on queer game studies,a subfield of game studies that deals with LGBTQ representation and queer theory. [2]
Their second book,The Queer Games Avant-Garde (Duke University Press,2020),won the 2021 Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award,a Stonewall Book Award,from the American Library Association. [3] Their third book,Sex Dolls at Sea:Imagined Histories of Sexual Technologies (MIT Press,2022),won the 2023 Anne Friedberg Innovative Scholarship Award from the Society of Cinema and Media Studies. [4]
Ruberg co-edited,with Adrienne Shaw,Queer Game Studies (University of Minnesota Press,2017),an anthology of essays by academics,journalists,and game designers about queer representation and queer theory in video games. The collection was reviewed favorably by the LA Review of Books and Lambda Literary. [5] [6]
Ruberg is a co-founder of the Queerness in Games Conference,"a community-oriented,internationally-recognized event dedicated to exploring the intersection of LGBTQ issues and games" that ran from 2013 to 2020. [7] From 2005 to 2009,they were a technology journalist writing for such publications as The Village Voice , Wired , The Economist ,and Forbes . [8]
In the arts and in literature,the term avant-garde identifies a genre of art,an experimental work of art,and the experimental artist who created the work of art,which usually is aesthetically innovative,whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable to the artistic establishment of the time. The military metaphor of an advance guard identifies the artists and writers whose innovations in style,form,and subject-matter challenge the artistic and aesthetic validity of the established forms of art and the literary traditions of their time;thus how the artists who created the anti-novel and Surrealism were ahead of their times.
Jane McGonigal is an American author,game designer,and researcher. McGonigal is known for her game Jane the Concussion Slayer and her role as Director of Game Research and Development at Institute for the Future.
Amelia Jones,originally from Durham,North Carolina,is an American art historian,art theorist,art critic,author,professor and curator. Her research specialisms include feminist art,body art,performance art,video art,identity politics,and New York Dada. Jones's earliest work established her as a feminist scholar and curator,including through a pioneering exhibition and publication concerning the art of Judy Chicago;later,she broadened her focus on other social activist topics including race,class and identity politics. Jones has contributed significantly to the study of art and performance as a teacher,researcher,and activist.
Martin Bauml Duberman is an American historian,biographer,playwright,and gay rights activist. Duberman is Professor of History Emeritus at Herbert Lehman College in the Bronx,New York City.
Johanna Drucker is an American author,book artist,visual theorist,and cultural critic. Her scholarly writing documents and critiques visual language:letterforms,typography,visual poetry,art,and lately,digital art aesthetics. She is currently the Martin and Bernard Breslauer Professor in the Department of Information Studies at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. In 2023,she was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
Borderline is a 1930 film,written and directed by Kenneth Macpherson and produced by the Pool Group in Territet,Switzerland. The silent film,with English inter-titles,is primarily noted for its handling of the contentious issue of inter-racial relationships,using avant-garde experimental film-making techniques,and is today very much part of the curriculum of the study of modern cinematography.
Amy Susan Bruckman is a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology affiliated with the School of Interactive Computing and the GVU Center. She is best known for her pioneering research in the fields of online communities and the learning sciences. In 1999,she was selected as one of MIT Technology Review's TR100 awardees,honoring 100 remarkable innovators under the age of 35.
Griselda Frances Sinclair Pollock is an art historian and cultural analyst of international,postcolonial feminist studies in visual arts and visual culture. Since 1977,Pollock has been an influential scholar of modern art,avant-garde art,postmodern art,and contemporary art. She is a major influence in feminist theory,feminist art history,and gender studies. She is renowned for her innovative feminist approaches to art history which aim to deconstruct the lack of appreciation and importance of women in art as other than objects for the male gaze.
Carol Guess is an American poet and fiction writer. Her work emphasizes compression,musicality,and experimental structure.
Anna Anthropy is an American video game designer,role-playing game designer,and interactive fiction author whose works include Mighty Jill Off and Dys4ia. She is the game designer in residence at the DePaul University College of Computing and Digital Media.
Plenitude is a Canadian literary magazine. Launched in 2012 by editor Andrea Routley as a platform for new work by LGBTQ writers,it originally published biannually in electronic format for distribution on e-readers and tablets;in early 2014,the magazine announced that it was also launching a conventional print run. As of 2015,however,the magazine no longer publishes paid issues in either format,but instead publishes all new content directly to its website.
Mattie Brice is an independent video game designer,critic,educator,and industry activist. Her games and writing focus on diversity initiatives in the games industry,discussing the perspective of marginalized minority voices to publications like Paste,Kotaku,and The Border House. Her games are freeware and do not require programming to create.
Jonathan Alexander is an American rhetorician and memoirist. He is Chancellor's Professor of English,Informatics,Education,and Gender &Sexuality Studies at the University of California,Irvine. His scholarly and creative work is situated at the intersections of digital culture,sexuality,and composition studies. For his work in cultural journalism and memoir,Tom Lutz,founding editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books,has called him "one of our finest essayists."
Thomas Waugh is a Canadian critic,lecturer,author,actor,and activist,best known for his extensive work on documentary film and eroticism in the history of LGBT cinema and art. A professor emeritus at Concordia University,he taught 41 years in the film studies program of the School of Cinema and held a research chair in documentary film and sexual representation. He was also the director of the Concordia HIV/AIDS Project,1993-2017,a program providing a platform for research and conversations involving HIV/AIDS in the Montréal area.
A Queer History of the United States is a concise history of LGBT people in US society. It describes ways in which queer people have influenced the evolution of the United States,and how the culture of the United States has affected them.
Adrienne Shaw is an American game studies scholar and Associate Professor at Temple University in the Klein College of Media and Communication. She is known for her work on queer theory and LGBTQ representation in video games. She is the author of Gaming at the Edge:Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture,the co-editor of Queer Game Studies,and the founder of the LGBTQ Video Games Archive.
Caper in the Castro is a murder mystery video game developed by C.M. Ralph and released in 1989. It is the earliest known computer game to focus on LGBT themes. The game was originally released for Mac computers and distributed freely on bulletin board systems as charityware to raise money for the AIDS epidemic.
Kathryn Bond Stockton is an American writer and academic. She works at the University of Utah,where she serves as the inaugural Dean of the School for Cultural and Social Transformation and a Distinguished Professor of English. Her primary research areas are "queer theory,theories of race and racialized gender,and twentieth-century literature and film."
Lucian Kahn is an American role-playing game writer/designer and musician based in Brooklyn. His work focuses on LGBT,Jewish,and subcultural themes,typically utilizing satire and farce. His games include Visigoths vs. Mall Goths and his music includes Schmekel.
Avery Alder is a Canadian tabletop role-playing game designer. She designs games with themes of LGBTQ self-discovery,community building,and post-apocalyptic survival. Alder invented the Belonging Outside Belonging system,which became a template for future designers' games. Her work is a topic of scholarship in the history of game design.