Dr. Cameron Kunzelman

Dr. Cameron Kunzelman (he/him/his) he teaches in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in a number of allied humanities departments, including Communication Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and the INT program.

Education

• Ph.D., Communication Studies / Moving Image Studies, Georgia State University
• M.A., Film and Video, Georgia State University
• B.A., English / Women’s and Gender Studies, Mercer University

Specialty

Game studies, media studies, science fiction studies, film studies

Professional Interests

Dr. Kunzelman researches the relationship between people and their media objects. His work primarily focuses on the genre of science fiction and how it is instantiated within video games and films.

His first book, The World is Born From Zero: Understanding Speculation and Video Games, focuses on how the formal properties of science fiction video games produce subjectivities for their players.

His work takes an intersectional approach, focusing specifically on the ways that video games and other media forms activate or intensify modes of racialization.

Recent Publications

• The World is Born from Zero: Understanding Speculation and Video Games. De Gruyter Oldenbourg. (2022).
• “Why is ‘Nuclear Gandhi’ funny? Sly Civ and the Racial Imagination of Video Games” (with Darshana Jayemanne) in Video Games and Comedy, eds. Jaroslav Švelch, Krista Bonello, and Tomasz Majkowski. Routledge. (2022)
• Review of Against Flow by Braxton Soderman in New Media & Society (2022)
• Editor of “Games and SF” Special Issue of Science Fiction Film & Television (with Darshana Jayemanne) (2021)
• “Can You Describe Its Form? Annihilation and Cinematic Adaptation” in Surreal Entanglements, eds. Laura Shackleford and Louise Economides. Routledge. (2021)
• “How Do We Deal With Dark Souls? The Aesthetic Category as a Game Studies Method” in Hybrid Play: Crossing Boundaries in Game Design, Players Identities and Play Spaces, eds. Adriana de Souza e Silva and Ragan Glover-Rijkse. Routledge. (2020)
• Review of The Dark Fantastic by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas in Studies in the Fantastic No. 8 (2019)
• “Bioshock 2 and the Decay of the Human” in Beyond the Sea: Critical Perspectives on Bioshock, eds. Jessica Aldred and Felan Parker. McGill-Queens University Press. (2018)
• “Chatbots in the Metropolis: Turing and the Communicative Labor of the Multitude” (with Kevin Cummings) in Communication and Control: Tools, Systems, and New Dimensions. Lexington Books. (2015)

Contact Dr. Cameron Kunzelman

(478) 301-4051
kunzelman_c@mercer.edu
Office: Wiggs Hall, Room 220