Teaching
Links to the syllabi for my Fall 2025 courses are available in the page header.
Other recent courses include Storytelling in Video Games, Alternative Westerns, Social Media, Zombies on Screens, and Introduction to Game Studies.
Contact Information
My contact information is collected on a separate page.
Selected Research
Presently I’m in early stages of work on two articles: on a phenomenology of third-person video game cameras, and on genre Westerns in film and video games. In 2024 I published two articles on Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us video game series:
- “Adaptation, Violence, and Storytelling in The Last of Us” in Games and Culture
- “Facial Animation and Empathy in The Last of Us Parts I and II” in Persona Studies (9.2)
In 2025 I delivered papers on video game cameras at the annual conference of the Popular Culture Association and on diversity in The Last of Us at the “Technology and Film Labour: Crafting the Look of the Film” conference hosted by the University of Galway.
In 2024, I delivered papers on storytelling in video games at the Frontiers and Wastelands: The Boundaries of US American Identity conference hosted by the Universidad de Alcalá in Madrid, Spain, as well as the annual conferences of the Popular Culture Association, the Georgia Communication Association, and the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.
In August 2021 I contributed to and curated a theme week for In Media Res called “Transmedia Vikings.” In 2017 I published two articles on Mathieu Kassovitz’s film La Haine:
- Hip Hop Aesthetics in La Haine (Liquid Blackness 4.7)
- Teaching La Haine (The Cine-Files 13)
My paper “History with a Soundtrack: YouTube, Vernacular History, and Tupac Shakur” is included in the conference proceedings from the first Tupac Amaru Shakur Collection Conference. My book chapter “The Virtual Spaces of Civil Rights” appeared in volume 2 of Cinephilia in the Age of Digital Reproduction (Wallflower – Columbia UP, 2012). My article “Globalization and the U.S. Civil Rights Movement” appeared in Public Culture (23.3).
Service
From 2021-24, I coordinated our department’s BA program in Communication and Media Studies. In addition to other duties, for five years I chaired the university’s Information Technology Council and currently serve as a council member.
I am a member of Clayton State’s chapter of AAUP, the American Association of University Professors.
Dr. Steve Spence 