About

Cody Mejeur is Visiting Assistant Professor of Game Studies at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. They are a game scholar, developer, player, and activist whose work focuses on trans, queer, and feminist studies and social justice in video games and new media. They received their PhD in English from Michigan State University with specializations in game studies, digital humanities, and college teaching. Their work uses games to theorize narrative as an embodied and playful process that constructs how we understand ourselves, our realities, and our differences. They have published on games pedagogy, gender and queerness in games, and the narrative construction of reality in journals including Feminist Media Studies and Digital Humanities Quarterly and edited collections such as Beyond the Sea: Navigating Bioshock and The Pokémon Go Phenomenon.

Their current projects include their first monograph, Queer Narrative, Queer Play: Player Experiences and Ludic Realities in Video Games, which focuses focuses on how narrative operates in games to structure inward experiences and outward realities, and further argues that storytelling can build more inclusive and socially just realities through play. They are also the project lead on Trans Folks Walking, a 3D walking simulator game that is an anthology of trans experiences developed in collaboration with local media and LGBTQ resource centers.

They work with the LGBTQ Video Game Archive on preserving and visualizing LGBTQ representation in video games. They are also editor at One Shot: A Journal of Critical Games & Play and serve as Diversity Officer for the Digital Games Research Association.

Education

PhD in English, Michigan State University, 2019

MA in English, University of Chicago, 2013

BA in English and History, Western Michigan University, 2012

Other Publications

Journal Articles

“Gamers, Gender, and Cruel Optimism: The Limits of Social Identity Constructs in The Guild”. Co-authored with Amanda Cote. Feminist Media Studies (Fall 2017). DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2017.1376699

“Serious Play: Critical Game Studies in an English Setting”. The Atrium: A Journal of Academic Voices (Spring 2015).

Book Chapters

“Chasing Wild Space: Narrative Outsides and World-Building Frontiers in Knights of the Old Republic and The Old Republic”. Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling, edited by Dan Hassler-Forest and Sean Guynes, Amsterdam University Press, 2017. 199-212.

Forthcoming

Pokémon GO, Narrative, and the Construction of Augmented Reality”. Not Just Play: Essays on Motivations and Impacts of Pokemon GO, edited by Jamie Henthorn, Andrew Kulak, Kristopher Purzycki, and Stephanie Vie, McFarland Press, 2018 (in press).

“‘Look At Me, Boy!’: Carnivalesque, Masks, and Queer Performativity in BioShock”. Beyond the Sea: Critical Perspectives on Bioshock, edited by Felan Parker and Jessica Aldred, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018 (in press).

“Breaking Neuro Ground”. Co-authored with Natalie Phillips, Salvatore Antonnuci, Melissa Klamer, and Karah Smith. Further Reading, edited by Matthew Rubery and Leah Price, Oxford University Press, 2018 (forthcoming).

“The Hunt for Queer Spaces: Indie Games, Representation, and Limited Worlds”. Indie Games in the Digital Age, edited by Cynthia Wang and Michael J Clarke, Bloomsbury Press, 2019 (forthcoming).

 

“Queer Game Studies”. Postmodern Culture (Winter 2018-2019), Book Review (forthcoming).

 

Blog Posts

    Projects

    Queer Intersections: Visualizing the LGBTQ Video Game Archive (queerintersections.cmejeur.org)

    The Archive of Player Experience: Visualizing Variable Narrative in Games (ape.cmejeur.org)

    MSU Game Studies Guild: An Interdisciplinary, Cross-Campus Game Studies Community (https://libguides.lib.msu.edu/gsg)

    Upcoming Talks and Conferences

    “Embodied Cognition and Queer Minds in Video Games: Narrative Interfaces and Orientations”. Modern Language Association 2019, Chicago, IL, January 2019.

    Memberships

    Modern Language Association

    Society for Cinema & Media Studies

    International Society for the Study of Narrative (ISSN)

    Cognitive Futures in the Arts and Humanities

    Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA)

    Popular Culture Association

    American Culture Association

    Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory (HASTAC)

    College English Association

    Sigma Tau Delta English Honors Society

    Cody Mejeur

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