Reconstruction 6.1 (Winter 2006)

Ben Fisler is the director of the theatre program at Otero Junior College.  His publications appear in Theatre Survey, Theatre Journal, Research in Drama Education, The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, The Puppetry Yearbook, The Encyclopedia of Modern Drama, and An Encyclopedia of African American Literature.  He is the two-year college representative of the Rocky Mountain Theatre Association.  In his spare time, Dr. Fisler plays far too many video games. 

Joyce Goggin completed her PhD in comparative literature at the Université de Montréal in 1998. She is currently working as an Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam, with an interdisciplinary appointment in literature, film and new media. Dr. Goggin’s recent publications include “Architectural Space, Cyber Bodies and the Literary Text: A Voyage through Neuromancer”, “ Dire Straits: Paul Auster’s The Music of Chance and Economic Loss” and “ Metaphor and Madness: Stacking the Deck on Iraq.” Dr. Goggin has also published articles on film, video games, gambling, money, play and magic and is currently writing a book on gambling in various media.

Ben Hourigan is a PhD candidate in the Department of English with Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia. His doctoral thesis examines the mostly conservative political content of role-playing videogames (RPGs) from Japan and the West. He currently lives in Osaka, Japan, where he works as an ESL teacher. His blog and other writings are available at http://benhourigan.com.

Jay McRoy is an Associate Professor of English and Cinema Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Parkside. He is the editor of Japanese Horror Cinema (Edinburgh University Press 2004) and the co-editor, with Richard Hand, of Monstrous Adaptations: Generic and Thematic Mutations in Horror Film (forthcoming 2007 from Manchester University Press). Jay's latest book, Nightmare Japan: Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema will be published in late 2006 by Rodopi University Press.

Claudia Mesch teaches 20th century and contemporary art at Arizona State University, and has published on various topics in visual culture. She is completing a book, Art and Demarcation: Around the Berlin Wall, 1961-1989. She is co-editor of The Joseph Beuys Reader (I.B.Tauris, London, forthcoming).

John Miller teaches literature and writing at National University in Costa Mesa, CA.  His recent publications include articles on Izaak Walton and J.R.R. Tolkien.  He is currently working on a study of American encyclopedic narratives.

Inez Schaechterle recently completed a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Writing at Bowling Green State University and is an assistant professor of English at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa. Her current research centers on late nineteenth-century sexual reform speech.

Melanie Swalwell lectures in the Media Studies Programme at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.  Her research centres on newer media with particular attention to media arts and digital games, and the intersections of these.  Her writing on digital games is diverse and includes projects on game art, war/games, the development of Lan gaming groups, and the history of early game production in New Zealand.  The last of these is the subject of an interactive multimedia piece, "Castoffs from the Golden Age," a collaboration with Erik Loyer which will appear in March 2006 in Vectors .  Melanie is also editing a collection of essays with Jason Wilson, attending to the particular pleasures and engagements of computer gaming (McFarland & Co). http://www.vuw.ac.nz/seft/media-studies/staff/melanieswalwell.aspx

Shawn Thomson is a doctoral candidate in American Literature at the University of Kansas. He is the author of The Romantic Architecture of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (2001). His current research examines the cultural responses to the Robinson Crusoe story in nineteenth-century American literature.

Terri Toles Patkin is Professor of Communication at Eastern Connecticut State University.  She earned the M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology of communication from Cornell University.  Her research interests focus on the intersection of media and interpersonal communication, with recent publications addressing topics ranging from female suicide bombers to eating competitions to themed funerals. 

G. Christopher Williams is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. His research interests include narratology, interactive narrative, and postmodern theories of identity. He has published previously on popular culture in various collections and in journals such as Atenea, Film Criticism, Gothic Studies, Popular Culture Review and Post Script.