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.
Selected CV
BOOK: ON VIDEO GAMES
Brief intro to my On Video Games research in an interview on the UCSC News Page.
Selected Writing
Forthcoming 2021: “Video Games: Art, Inclusion, and the Techno-cultural Imaginary” in Gwangju Biennale 2020 Anthology: Stronger Than Bone.
Forthcoming 2021: “Domestic Snapshots: Female Self-Imaging Practices Then and Now” in Visual Culture Approaches to the Selfie (ed. Derek Conrad Murray, Routledge)
Forthcoming 2021: “America is Dead. Long Live America!: Political Affect in Days Gone” in European Journal of American Studies [Special Issue: “Video Games and/in American Studies: Politics, Popular Culture, and Populism”] eds. Mahshid Mayar and Stefan Schubert.
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.
