Soraya Murray (PhD Cornell) studies contemporary visual culture, especially film and video games. She is a Professor in the Film + Digital Media Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her writings may be found in journals in the areas of contemporary art, film and digital culture, including venues such as Art Journal, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Public Art Review, Third Text, Open Library of Humanities, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, Feminist Media Histories, The Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, the European Journal of American Studies, Film Quarterly and Critical Inquiry.
Her essays are anthologized nationally and internationally, including most recently, EcoGames: Playful Perspectives on the Climate Crisis (Holland 2024), Reset (Italy 2023), Red Dead Redemption: History, Myth and Violence in the Video Game West (USA 2023) and Video Games and Spatiality in American Studies (Germany 2022). Murray joined the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies editorial board in 2023, and is a member of the critical/historical game studies journal ROMchip’s editorial group.
Murray’s first book, On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space (I.B. Tauris, 2018, paperback Bloomsbury 2021), considers video games from a visual culture perspective and how they both mirror and are constitutive of larger societal fears, dreams, hopes and even complex struggles for recognition. Murray is currently co-editing an anthology with media and games scholar TreaAndrea Russworm on antiracist futures in games and play. She is also publishing a new book on anxiety films about technology from the 1970s to the present called Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination, forthcoming from The MIT Press in February 2026. Murray currently serves as Provost of Porter College, UCSC.
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PHOTOS
UC FACULTY PAGE
I teach courses in FILM, VIDEO GAMES and ART such as:
Video Games as Visual Culture (FILM 80V)
Technothriller (FILM 80T)
Games, Representation, and the Cinematic (FILM 194C)
Toward an Ethics of New Media (FILM 234)
Short Bio
Soraya Murray (Ph.D., Cornell University) is a Professor in the Film and Digital Media Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her writings on art, film, and video games are anthologized nationally and internationally, and may be found in Art Journal, Third Text, Film Quarterly, and Critical Inquiry. Murray’s first book, On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space (London: I. B. Tauris, 2018), considers video games from a visual studies perspective. Murray is currently co-editing an anthology with media and games scholar TreaAndrea Russworm entitled Antiracist Futures: Games, Play and the Speculative Imagination. She is also publishing a new book on anxiety films about technology from the 1970s to the present called Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination, forthcoming from The MIT Press in February 2026.
Even Shorter Bio:
Soraya Murray is a Professor in the Film and Digital Media Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her work explores the visual culture of innovation, advanced computation, and its imaginaries as imaged in popular American films, for which technology assumes a central role. Murray’s first book, On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space (I.B. Tauris, 2018, paperback 2021), examines popular video games like Assassin’s Creed, Spec Ops: The Line, Metal Gear Solid, and Grand Theft Auto as visual culture. Her second book, Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination (MIT, 2026) examines the fraught social imaginary around technology and innovation using popular films from the 1970s to the present. She currently serves as Provost of Porter College, UCSC.
Soraya Murray is a Professor in the Film and Digital Media Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Murray’s book, On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space considers video games from a visual studies perspective. Murray is co-editing an anthology with TreaAndrea Russworm entitled Antiracist Futures, and publishing a book on the American socio-technological imaginary in films from the 1970s to the present, called Technothriller.
SORAYA MURRAY 