Artist Bio
I teach undergraduate and graduate courses in media history, historical and cultural visualization, computational media, information science + studies, and digital humanities theory/practice in Art, Art History & Visual Studies (AAHVS), Information Science + Information Studies (ISIS), the MFA Program in Experimental and Documentary Arts and the MA Program in Historical and Cultural Visualization. I am also the Program Director for ISIS, which offers Undergraduate and Graduate Certificates.

My primary research focus is on the critical and practical affordances of database-driven spatial media such as digital maps, games and virtual worlds, and mobile applications for exploratory and narrative use in teaching, research, artistic expression, and public outreach. I have co-developed augmented reality and game-based “digital city” projects in/for Durham, NC, Vancouver, BC, and Venice, Italy, among others, and have lectured and on digital media and digital heritage topics widely. I am deeply interested in the question of how the digital turn in academia affects scholarly practice, and the relationship of academic research and its expression to the wider world.

I also create videogame-based installation artwork with the Psychasthenia Studio art collective; we have shown our projects internationally. I am an active member of the ACM SIGGRAPH (Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques) digital arts community, and have curated juried exhibitions themed on “Information Aesthetics” and on “XYZN: Scale” for the annual conferences in New Orleans, and Anaheim, respectively. I will edit the special SIGGRAPH art-themed issue of Leonardo in 2015. I am also a member of the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA) 2014 and 2015 program committees. I served on the Modern Language Association’s Committee on Information Technology from 2011-13, helping to revise the Guidelines for Evaluating Work in Digital Humanities and Digital Media.

I have a Ph.D. in English (Victorian Literature and Culture with a focus on sensationalism and women’s authorship) from the University of Rochester, as well as a Certificate in Gender and Women’s Studies from the Susan B. Anthony Institute at UR. Before coming to Duke, I worked at Stanford as an Academic Technology Manager for Undergraduate Education and as an Academic Technology Specialist for the Introduction to the Humanities program (IHUM). I have also worked as Instructional Multimedia Specialist at Grinnell College. And, I’m still proud and honored to have been part of The Camelot Project at Rochester way back in the twentieth century.