About Me

steve-spence-head-shot
Dr. Steve Spence
Professor of Media Studies
PhD, U Florida, 1999

Teaching

Links to the syllabi for my Spring 2024 courses are available in the header. In addition, I supervise the CMS 3901 internships.

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.

Selected Research

In spring 2024 I will deliver papers on storytelling in videogames at the annual conferences of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, the Georgia Communication Association, and the Popular Culture Association.

My article “Adaptation, Violence, and Storytelling in The Last of Us” is forthcoming in Games and Culture. My article “Faces, Interfaces, and Empathy in The Last of Us Parts I and II” is under review.

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:

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.