Provides a general, graduate-level introduction to the academic field of game studies, ideal for students working on interactive digital media objects or platforms and/or cultures of play. We will discuss select foundational texts in order to consider the field’s initially contested relationship to literary and film studies and turn-of-the-century new media theory. We will also examine a plethora of recent work that simultaneously expands and critiques canonical game studies through the lenses of the analog, race, queer theory, feminism, ecology, affect, historical preservation, and labor. Students will be encouraged to read and play, and to consider research, presentation, and pedagogical methods specific to this field.