PhD, English, Michigan State University

MA, English, University of Chicago

New Media; Narrative; Game Studies; Queer Studies; Feminist Studies; Cognitive Humanities; Digital Humanities

Queerness, Storytelling, Embodiment, Intersectionality, Difference, Social Justice, Virtual Reality

Biography

Cody Mejeur is a game scholar, developer, player, and activist whose work focuses on trans, queer, and feminist studies and social justice in video games and new media. They received their PhD in English from Michigan State University with specializations in game studies, digital humanities, and college teaching. Their work uses games to theorize narrative as an embodied and playful process that constructs how we understand ourselves, our realities, and our differences. They have published on games pedagogy, gender and queerness in games, and the narrative construction of reality in journals including Feminist Media Studies and Digital Humanities Quarterly and edited collections such as Beyond the Sea: Navigating Bioshock and The Pokémon Go Phenomenon.

Their current projects include their first monograph, Queer Narrative, Queer Play: Player Experiences and Ludic Realities in Video Games, which focuses focuses on how narrative operates in games to structure inward experiences and outward realities, and further argues that storytelling can build more inclusive and socially just realities through play. They are also the project lead on Trans Folks Walking, a 3D walking simulator game that is an anthology of trans experiences developed in collaboration with local media and LGBTQ resource centers.

They work with the LGBTQ Video Game Archive on preserving and visualizing LGBTQ representation in video games. They are also editor at One Shot: A Journal of Critical Games & Play and serve as Diversity Officer for the Digital Games Research Association.

Courses Taught

DMS 462: Game Design

DMS 448: Games, Gender and Culture

DMS 415: Playing Self/Community Online