Jagoda's Blog

Patrick Jagoda is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow of new media at the University of Chicago and will begin as an Assistant Professor of English in 2012. He received his PhD in English from Duke University with a certificate in Information Science and Information Studies. Patrick is interested in the ubiquity of networks, as metaphors and material systems, in the post-1945 period. His work examines how contemporary American literature, film, television, videogames, and virtual worlds deploy different artistic forms to render the complexities of global networks. His articles and reviews have appeared in Critical Inquiry, Social Text, Neo-Victorian Studies, and American Literature.

Patrick sees his scholarship as inextricably interrelated with his creative work. In recent years, he has worked on projects that contribute to new media learning, digital storytelling, and transmedia game design. With a group of University of Chicago students he directed the Alternate Reality Game Oscillation in 2011. In this game, players encountered an interactive narrative that was conveyed through media old and new, including paper flyers, sidewalk drawings, websites, a Facebook page, emails, a text-adventure game, chatbot interactions, IRC, cassette tapes, and a live performance. Patrick is also involved in an ongoing collaboration with Melissa Gilliam (University of Chicago Professor in the Departments of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Pediatrics) on the Game Changer Chicago initiative. This project uses digital storytelling and game production to promote a participatory and systems-oriented form of sexual health learning aimed at adolescents.