I actually don't know at all, but PM TinPeregrinus. I believe he is a professor and very interested in game studies, especially those relating games to literature. He will probably know more about this field and be able to give you advice.

Was it TinPeregrinus that was on the podcast a few months ago? Talking about teaching game design versus making games? I thought it was someone else. But that person might have some other academic contacts outside of the programming/art design departments.

And post here what you find out, because I'm really interested in this as well.

Therein lies my problem, Zoidberg. I get far too many false positives even without broadening my search with more terms!

I think I should probably just go pout.

Wordsmythe, I think you'd really be better off doing a degree in a more traditional discipline or program. Two questions: what do you want to do with the degree? (I'm assuming that you're interested in becoming a scholar, but I just want to make sure before I start spouting off about that) and, are you open to moving wherever you get in, or are you confined to a specific locale?

Yeah, I want to go into academia, and I think you're right about a more traditional program. What I really want is to find a school where I can keep on being a literature (or creative writing) nerd but that will also not laugh me off campus for looking seriously at games.

I'm open to moving, but I'd prefer staying in Chicago if possible.

I plan to be a proud supporter of "cross-pollinating departments" regardless.

Oh. See, I went to the University of Chicago, where they actively avoid anything sexy or practical. Perhaps I need to counteract that training.

Game Studies / New Media Studies / American Studies is pretty interdisciplinary and hard to nail down a list of programs. I'd suggest trolling through the journals to see who is publishing in the field and then checking to see if that kind of publishing record is leading to tenure. Then you can start identifying programs and looking at class lists.

Ian Bogost is one place to start. He & TinPeregrinus have had an interesting back and forth about Game Studies as a discipline and Tin's Escapist piece. He was recently awarded Tenure at Georgia Tech off a publishing record consisting mainly of games analysis.

James Paul Gee is faculty at Arizona State University and his grad students mostly work with games, or so I gather from what he says in his latest book Good Video Games + Good Learning. At ASU he is the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies, and teaches in the Applied Linguistics Interdisciplinary Phd. program.

Henry Jenkins at MIT has been looking at games and other participatory media longer than most. He's the chair of the comparative media studies program at MIT. Nick Monfort of Grand Text Auto is also a digital media professor at MIT.

The MacArthur Foundation's Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning may also be a window into who is doing interesting work in your field.

Good luck, and please let us know what you learn about specific programs.

Take a look at Dennis Jerz's website. I had him as a professor in college while he was teaching at the UW-Eau Claire. He had sort of a rough time there I think but now he's at Seton Hill University. We had some really interesting classes on literacy, journalism and writing as they relate to video games. For example, as a class assignment we all learned how to write our own text-based adventure games using Z-machine (the language/interpreter used for the old Infocom games.

Also, take a look at Epistemic Games at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I have a friend involved in that program and they do all sorts of extremely interesting game-related research. I've helped out a couple of times with some research projects as well and it's been a lot of fun. They are more focused on understanding how games help people learn and using games for teaching children to learn in new and more effective ways but they might have something that would interest you.

Good luck!

Oh--another thought--look for programs in Rhetoric, as well. It's kind of a boutique-y thing, but the UC Berkeley Rhetoric program is absolutely amazing.

Both of these are specific to education, but…

Here is one resource you can look at: http://www.inms.umn.edu/about/whoswho.htm

Nora Paul did a presentation at GDC that seems very interesting. I contacted her a few times, and need to try again, tho she dropped the conversation when she heard I was only going for my Masters—think I underclassed her.

Also, apparently the University of Wisconsin-Madison would be an interesting considering both Gee and Kurt Squire teach there. Both are quite interesting, with Gee being the more well known.

Thanks, I'll definitely check out Northwestern. I haven't really looked there since I decided not to go to journalism school straight out of college.

Yes, yes, yes... yes.

The latter. Most of what I hear and see about academics working on games seems to be more as craftsmen and businessmen. That's part of my problem in looking for a place for myself.

But I'll certainly look at NU, even if they are the crosstown rivals of my alma mater.

In that case, WS, I think you should do what most English grad students do: look for a strong, vibrant English department with a couple of professors who have published in your areas of literary interest. Once you're studying under good people and wrapped up in a healthy graduate environment, you ought to have no trouble focusing on games—assuming, that is, two things:

(1) Games are legitimate candidates for serious study.
(2) You are capable of studying games seriously, and of contributing something novel to existing scholarship.

I think those are both pretty safe assumptions. If (1) and (2) hold true, then you should be able to convince the people in your department that your project is worthwhile, whether they care already about games or not. In fact, one major desideratum of any inquiry into games is that it should prove helpful and informative even for non-gamers. (Maybe especially for non-gamers.) That is, it should express something noteworthy about theory, or narrative, or society, or history, or human nature, or a well-established scholar or artist or author, or some other ultimate fixation of your choice.

Something else to keep in mind is that your professional reputation will come in large part from your publications and (to a far lesser extent) your conference presentations. If as a graduate student you can publish in well-regarded journals a couple of scholarly articles on games, that will speak just as loudly of your specialty in that field as would a doctoral dissertation on the same topic. So even if your dissertation doesn't pertain directly to games, you have the opportunity to make a name for yourself in other, equally viable ways. But in order to do this, you will need to find people you enjoy working with, which is why I shall end by suggesting, once again, that you seek out an English department that is lively, sociable, and which harbors some professors whose curricula vitae leap out at you, even if only in ways that have nothing to do with games.

I'm staying out of this because our curriculum is based around practical art as opposed to analysis.

That being said, I love the subject!

I've been informed, that if you're interested in narrative then you should look into Georgia Tech and the work of Janet Murray.

I'd first get her "Hamlet on the Holodeck" book, and see if it's your cup of tea. If you're going to spend many years of your life working under someone's program, you better really like what they're doing.

But that's just general PhD advice.