About Me

steve-spence-head-shot
Dr. Steve Spence
Professor of Media Studies
PhD, U Florida, 1999
Film, Communication, and Performing Arts
(the department’s name is changing)

Teaching

In Summer 2023 I am teaching a fully online section of CMS 4610 Social Media. In addition, I supervise the CMS 3901 internships.

Links to the syllabi for my Summer and Fall 2023 courses are available in the header.

Other recent courses include Zombies on Screens, Storytelling in Video Games and Introduction to Game Studies.

Contact Information

My contact information is collected on a separate page.

Research

I’m currently working on an article that focuses on adaptation and The Last of Us television show and video games. In 2022 and 2023 I presented on these games at annual conferences of the Popular Culture Association.

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:

These developed from a paper, “Hip Hop Aesthetics in La Haine,” delivered at the annual conference of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Other recent papers focused on film and television include “Eyes on the Prize and the Music of Black Power” (SCMS 2016) and two on Upstream Color.

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

I coordinate our department’s BA in Communication and Media Studies. In addition to other duties, for five years I chaired the university’s Information Technology Council and current serve as a council member.

I am a member of Clayton State’s chapter of AAUP, the American Association of University Professors.