Rhetoric/Composition/Play through Video Games Reshaping Theory and Practice of Writing

Video games, contributors to Rhetoric/Composition/Play assume, can be not only productive to play, but can greatly enhance learning - specifically reading, writing, and critical thinking - in myriad ways. The collection explores games as rhetorical objects, as texts equally as sophisticated as their media counterparts (films and books), and as foundations on which a classroom curriculum can be built. Scholars in this volume investigate video games' theoretical and applied dimensions, offering innovative ways to enhance composition-rhetoric scholarship and teaching through the study of games, gamers, and gaming culture.

Richard Colby is a Lecturer in the award-winning University of Denver (USA) Writing Program. He co-edited a special issue of the journal Computers and Composition Online on gaming and composition with Rebekah Shultz Colby, to which he also contributed brief interviews with notable game designers on their perspectives about the intersections between gaming and writing. He also co-wrote an article with Rebekah Shultz Colby for Computers and Composition on a writing and research course using World of Warcraft. He teaches courses on the rhetoric of games and disciplinary research using gaming spaces.


Rebekah Shultz Colby co-edited a special issue about games with Richard Colby that appeared in Computers and Composition Online. Also with Richard Colby, she co-authored an article about using World of Warcraft to teach disciplinary research writing for Computers and Composition and has recently written an article about how gaming pedagogy impacts female students for Computers and Composition Online. She has written about visual rhetoric for Kairos and gaming pedagogy for College Composition and Communication. She teaches courses that use games to teach rhetoric and disciplinary writing at the University of Denver, USA.

 

Matthew S. S. Johnson is Associate Professor, Director of Expository Writing, and rhetoric-composition specialist at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, USA. His academic interests include composition and rhetorical theory, writing pedagogy, and digital/electronic literacies. He has published about composition and game studies in the journal Dichtung Digital and the collections composing(media) = composing(embodiment), Writing and the Digital Generation, From Hip-Hop to Hyperlinks, and TechKnowledgies. He also guest-edited a special issue of Computers & Composition with Pilar Lacasa ('Reading Games: Composition, Literacy, and Video Gaming'). His shorter pieces on games and media pedagogy have appeared in College Composition and Communication and College English. He is currently co-writing a first-year composition textbook (On Composition) with Heather G. S. Johnson, and serves as Reviews Editor for the Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds.

To come