http://www.cjritter.com videogames. rhetoric. culture. play. Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:48:25 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Last Friday, I gave a presentation with my friend and collaborator Shawn LameBull to the English department on the significance and complexity of videogames as media. (Here's an audio recording of the presentation, and here's a link to the Prezi "slideshow" that accompanied it.) Afterward, Dr. Kirk McAuley, a professor ... http://www.cjritter.com/2010/02/09/videogames-and-print-culture/ I've just posted the last two chapters of my dissertation draft. I also changed the title a bit. Let the revision begin! http://www.cjritter.com/2010/02/03/draft-1-is-done/ Here, verbatim, is the rejection email I just got from Michigan, who have apparently confused me with an 80s pop band: December 9, 2009 Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Pullman, WA  99163 Dear Mr. Mr.: Thank you for applying for our position in the English Department here at Michigan.  The Search Committee read your materials with much ... http://www.cjritter.com/2009/12/09/my-rejection-letter-from-michigan/ If you didn't catch my colloquium presentation with Shawn Lamebull on Wednesday, I've made a couple of recordings of it in podcast-friendly formats: Here's the video version (122mb .mp4). Here's the audio version (46mb .mp3). http://www.cjritter.com/2009/11/06/podcasts-of-our-presentation/ So the newest chapter draft is up, finally. It took me extra time because it's 50% longer than the last one (9k words vs 6k), and it's full of pictures and videos. I'm not very happy with how they look on the page right now - their size and alignment ... http://www.cjritter.com/2009/10/14/a-problem-with-images-part-2/ The chapter I'm currently working on is about the ways WoW's races are represented - all of the visual, aural, and narrative elements of their designs, and the real-life influences behind them. I'm trying to take advantage of my digital format a lot here, and include as many images and ... http://www.cjritter.com/2009/09/22/a-problem-with-images/ I was laid low by the dreaded PAX Pox for much of this week, so I finally just now got around to pulling my handful of pictures from PAX off the old camera. I didn't take many - it was one of those environments that's too overwhelming to take ... http://www.cjritter.com/2009/09/15/pax-pics/ Just ran across a great article on Gamasutra by James Portnow called "Ludus Florentis: The Flowering of Games." It argues that the games industry is undergoing a sea change, and it dovetails nicely with my PAX blog. It also contains a really lovely diagram of the evolution of the industry ... http://www.cjritter.com/2009/09/14/ludus-florentis-the-flowering-of-games/ The first solid draft of Chapter 1 is up. Still no Works Cited yet - I'm trying to find the most elegant way to do it. (What I want is a nice hypertextual way to follow in-text citations to the Works Cited. It's easy enough to do, but I can't ... http://www.cjritter.com/2009/09/11/dissertation-update-9-11-09/ I'm now home from the Penny Arcade Expo - PAX - the first non-academic, fan-type conference I've attended. I must say it was a lot more fun than the academic conferences I've been to. And, in many ways, more educational. In lieu of wading through the 79 emails in my ... http://www.cjritter.com/2009/09/08/what-i-learned-at-pax/