[-empyre-] Welcome to April on -empyre: Digital Media and the Interstices of Identity.

[Renate Terese Ferro]

I would like to welcome long time friend Soraya Murray to -empyre
soft-skinned space. Soraya teaches at the University of California at
Santa Cruz. I have copied her biography below for more information on her
teaching and research interests. At the 2011 ISEA in an Istanbul café, I
recall talking with Soraya about her interests in the relationship of new
media and gaming to gender and race. It is with great pleasure that I
welcome Soraya this month as our guest moderator. Her expertise in Digital
Culture and gaming as well as her sensitivity and knowledge as to how
issues of representation and politics are so directly relational to
networked life render her to be the perfect candidate to assimilate our
upcoming topic and guests. All too often these issues percolate beneath
the surface remaining ignored. I am pleased that this topic may pick up on
some of the threads that were expressed in February¹s topic New Tools/New
Technologies and March¹s topic, Engineering the University. Welcome Soraya
and guests to our focal topic for April: Digital Media and the Interstices
of Identity.

I look forward to it very much.

Soraya Murray holds a Ph.D. in art history from Cornell University. An
Assistant Professor in Film and Digital Media at the University of
California, Santa Cruz, she is also faculty in the Digital Arts and New
Media MFA Program, affiliated with the History of Art and Visual Culture
Department and the Center for Games and Playable Media. Murray is an
interdisciplinary scholar who focuses on contemporary visual culture, with
particular interest in contemporary art, cultural studies and games.  Her
writings have been featured in publications such as Art Journal, Nka:
Journal of Contemporary African Art, Public Art Review, Third Text and
PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art.



Renate Ferro
Visiting Assistant Professor of Art,Cornell University
Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office:  306
Ithaca, NY  14853
Email:   <rferro at cornell.edu <mailto:rtf9 at cornell.edu>>
URL:  http://www.renateferro.net <http://www.renateferro.net/>
      http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net
<http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net/>
Lab:  http://www.tinkerfactory.net <http://www.tinkerfactory.net/>

Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/