WRT: Writer Response Theory

(This is the?second of a collection of profiles of New Media programs around the globe. If you would like to contribute a profile of a program, even your own, please send it to Mark Marino. Use the format below as a template.)

Time Tower?(nearby).
Photo: Wikipedia

University of California, Riverside
Location: Riverside, California, USA
Type: University
Undergraduates: 14,571
Graduates: 2,051
Reviewer: Mark Marino
The skinny: What Lev Manovich has called ???The Wild Stallion??? of the UCs.? Marginalized?peoples and texts?take the center of?this desert haven.? Also, the study of new media here is not yet restricted by bounds of particular departmental affiliations or indentured servitude to benevolent industrialists. Keep an eye on the burgeoning Film and Visual Culture program.

Researchers of Note:
????Toby Miller, Film and Visual Culture (FVC–as well as?Women Studies, Sociology, English)
????Emory Elliott: English, President of the American Studies Association. Director of Center for Ideas and Society, at which Jesper Juul recently spoke.
????Derek Burrill, Dance (emphasis game studies and media theory)
????Renee Coulombe, Music (Also active member of?Adeaptable Girl?collective)
????Vorris Nunley, English (Rhet Comp, Philosophy, and Afro-Am. Expressive Culture)
????Tim Labor, Music (Sound Design)
????James Tobias, English(interests New Media and musicality across digital media)
????Victor Zordan, Computer Science(Participant in Siggraph Fashion Show)
????Carole-Anne Tyler, English (and FVC and new media; 2003 text Female Impersonation)
????Ken Rogers, Art History

Labs: Riverside Graphics Lab, director Victor Zordan

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Highlights:
The FVC program led by Toby Miller is rapidly approaching critical mass with a host of new hires.? Due to a strong cultural studies emphasis, one could even study new media in English.? Faculty in English are not only tolerant of New Media studies but encouraging.

The annual interdisciplinary humanities conference (dis)junctions (http://english.ucr.edu/gsea/disjunctions/index.html) gives a sense of the charism of the University.? Panel???s took such topics as ???Neil Gaiman,??? ???Brokeback Mountain,??? and ???Women and War,??? bringing together the popular, the marginal, the theoretical.? This ???wild stallion??? goes where broken horses dare not.? Also, currently one of the core members of Gameology.org studies here.? Alma Mater?of WRT’s Mark Marino.

UCR also had the first Doctoral program in dance which includes new media work with Dereck Burrill.

Additional Stats:
Ethnicity: African American 5.9%, Native American 0.4%, Chicano and Latino 22.4%, Asian/Asian American 39.6%, White/Caucasian 21.4%, other ethnic 2.1%, unknown/decline-to-state 8.2%.
Student/Faculty Ratio: 25:1

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