Gender Games: Recent Episodes
No Place Network
In between session at Game Developers Conference 2022, Paulus and Dr. Bo Ruberg chat about video games and the history of sex toys.
Dr. Bo Ruberg, Ph.D. (they/them) is an associate professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies and an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine where they co-run the CATS (Critical Approaches to Technology and the Social) research lab. From 2021 to 2026 they will serve as the co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, the premier peer-reviewed journal for the field of media studies.
Dr. Ruberg’s research explores gender and sexuality in digital media and digital cultures with a focus on queerness and video games. They are the author of three monographs: Sex Dolls at Sea: Imagined Histories of Sexual Technologies (MIT Press, 2022); The Queer Games Avant-Garde: How LGBTQ Game Makers Are Reimagining the Medium of Video Games (Duke University Press, 2020); and Video Games Have Always Been Queer (New York University Press, 2019). They are also the co-editor of two edited volumes–Live Streaming Culture (MIT Press, 2023) and Queer Game Studies (University of Minnesota Press, 2017)–as well as multiple special issues of peer-reviewed journals.
Ruberg is the co-founder of the annual Queerness and Games Conference, serving as lead organizer of the conference from 2013 to 2018. Dr. Ruberg received their Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, with graduate emphasis certification from the Berkeley Center for New Media and the Department of Women and Gender Studies. From 2015 to 2017, they served as a Provost’s Postdoctoral Scholar and member of the Society of Fellows in the Interactive Media & Games Division in the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. Prior to entering academia, they worked as a journalist, reporting on gender, sexuality, and culture in technology and video games.