Professor Soraya Murray is an interdisciplinary scholar who focuses on contemporary visual culture, with particular interest in art, cultural studies, film and video games. Murray holds a Ph.D. in art history and visual studies from Cornell University, and an MFA in Studio Art from the University of California, Irvine. An Associate Professor in the Film + Digital Media Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, she is also affiliated with the History of Art and Visual Culture Department, and the Art + Design: Games + Playable Media Program.
Murray researches and teaches in the following areas:
- Visual culture studies including contemporary art, film, and electronic games
- Critical game studies
- New media art, theory, and criticism
- Theories of technology and its imaginaries
- Contemporary art and globalization
- History of art and technology
- Science-fiction (utopia / dystopia / apocalypse / technothriller )
- Representations of otherness/race/class/gender/sexuality
Feel free to contact me for articles/writings if you are unable to access them online.
BOOK: ON VIDEO GAMES
Brief intro to my On Video Games research in an interview on the UCSC News Page.
Selected Writing
Forthcoming 2022. “Decisions, Decisions: Narrative Video Games, Perspectivization and Implicit Politics” book chapter.
“No Country For Old Tropes: Representation and Political Affect in Red Dead Redemption 2” accepted, revising for publication in edited anthology on Red Dead game series, to be published by University of Oklahoma Press, 2022. (7000 words)
Spotlight Interview by TreaAndrea Russworm in Journal of Cinema and Media Studies Vol. 60, No. 1 (Fall 2020): 1-3.
“Horizons Already Here” in Art Journal Vol. 79, No. 2 [Special Forum on Games and Landscape] Summer 2020: pp. 42-113. Includes work by Soraya Murray, ed., Harun Farocki, Dorothy R. Santos, Alenda Chang, Tracy Fullerton, COLL.EO, Eugénie Shinkle and Hava Aldouby.
“Augmented Reality Bites: Black Mirror’s “Playtest” and the Unstable Now” in eds. Terence McSweeney and Stuart Joy, Through The Black Mirror: Deconstructing the Side Effects of the Digital Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
“The Triumphal Procession” in ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories Vol.1, No. 1 (July 2019).
“Race, Gender, and Genre in Spec Ops: The Line,” Film Quarterly, Vol. 70, Iss. 2, (Dec 2016
Conversation with Artist in Kori Newkirk: Sometimes Always Perhaps Never [artist monograph] (Los Angeles: LM Projects, 2015)
“Threeview: Thief reviewed by a critic, an analyst, and an academic” in VentureBeat, http://venturebeat.com/2014/03/21/threeview-thief-reviewed-by-a-critic-an-analyst-and-an-academic/, March 21, 2014.
“Threeview: Grand Theft Auto V reviewed by a critic, an analyst, and an academic” in VentureBeat, http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/30/threeview-grand-theft-auto-v-reviewed-by-a-critic-an-analyst-and-an-academic/September 30, 2013.
“Threeview: The Last of Us reviewed by a critic, an analyst, and an academic” in VentureBeat, http://venturebeat.com/2013/07/01/threeview-the-last-of-us/, July 1, 2013.
“Theorizing New Media in a Global Context; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love New Media” in FILE Festival Catalog, Electronic Language International Festival, 2013, organized by Paula Perissinotto e Richard Barreto (São Paolo, Brazil: Thaïs Costa, 2013), 10-23. [translated into Portuguese]
“Theorizing New Media in a Global Context; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love New Media” in CTheory, http://ctheory.net/ctheory_wp/theorizing-new-media-in-a-global-context/, published November 13, 2012.
“Threeview: Call of Duty: Black Ops II reviewed by a critic, an analyst, and an academic” in VentureBeat, http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/04/threeview-call-of-duty-black- ops-ii/#mrJK2hur6sr24lMI.99, December 4, 2012.
“Threeview: Assassin’s Creed III reviewed by a critic, an analyst, and an academic” in VentureBeat, http://venturebeat.com/2012/11/20/threeview-assassins-creed- iii/, November 20, 2012.
“Public Ritual: William Pope.L and Exorcisms of Abject Otherness,” in Public Art Review, 2010.
“On Art and Contamination: Performing Authenticity in Global Art Practices,” Co-authored with Derek Conrad Murray, in Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art 22/23 (Spring/Summer 2008): 88-93.
SORAYA MURRAY 