the convergence of academic fields

Back in June, Erin O’Connor asked why scholars in English departments would concern themselves with video games. Specifically, she asked

  • “What does an essay collection on the ecology of video games have to do with the discipline of English?” and
  • “Why is this study originating from within an English department?”

O’Connor asks important questions about academia and the field of English studies. Her readers’ comments, unfortunately, often provide more heat than light. I’m going to assume her questions were not rhetorical and point to two things that provide some contextual information that might help one to answer O’Connor’s questions:

First, an introduction to Ecocriticism provided by the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment.

Second, this analysis, by Noah Wardrip-Fruin of Grand Text Auto, of the writing in a forthcoming videogame.

[Thanks to
Dennis Jerz, Jill Walker, and Jason Rhody for pointers to the second item above.]

Okay, now I must go back to reading through my summer notes on eighteenth-cenury evangelical periodicals.

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