Jim Brown
Director
jamesjbrownjr.net
jim.brown@rutgers.edu
Jim Brown is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Digital Studies Center. His research focuses on the ethical and rhetorical dimensions of new media technologies, and he teaches courses in new media, digital rhetoric and writing, videogame studies, and electronic literature. His work has been published in journals such as Philosophy & Rhetoric, Computers and Composition, College Composition and Communication, and Pedagogy and in various edited collections, including The Computer Culture Reader and Rhetoric and the Digital Humanities. His book, Ethical Programs: Hospitality and the Rhetorics of Software, was published by the University of Michigan Press in 2015.
Anthony Wright
Associate Director
anthony.wright@rutgers.edu
Anthony Wright is Assistant Professor of Childhood Studies and Associate Director of the Digital Studies Center. He received his Ph.D. in medical anthropology in 2019 from the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco, and his research explores how digital technologies shape young people’s attempts to transform conditions of illness and injustice. His courses include: Digital Research Methods, Digital Youth Cultures, and Youth Activism and Art. His work has been published in Journal of Urban Health, Medical Anthropology, Global Studies of Childhood, Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry and multiple edited volumes. His book, The Promise of Poison: Faith in Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer Treatment, is under contract with NYU Press.
Doreen Wheeler
Program Coordinator
856-225-2597
wheelerd@camden.rutgers.edu
Doreen Wheeler is the Program Coordinator for Digital Studies as well as the Writing and Design Lab and provides support to the department including supervision of student workers, overseeing the budget, student advising, and coordination of all administrative duties of the department. She is also the coordinator of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Donor Scholarships, which works with students, college administrators, and departments. She joined Rutgers University in 2007 as Development Assistant in the Development Office where she worked with both Alumni and Students to navigate Faculty of Arts and Sciences Scholarships and donor relations with the students who were awarded scholarships. She later worked for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Office until she joined the Digital Studies Department and the Writing and Design Lab in Fall of 2018.
Affiliate Faculty
Robert A. Emmons Jr.
Co-Founder, Affiliate Faculty
Robert A. Emmons Jr. is a documentary filmmaker and Associate Teaching Professor of Filmmaking in the Department of Visual, Media, and Performing Arts at Rutgers University-Camden. From 2016-2020 he was the co-founding Associate Director of the Digital Studies Center. His films include:Enthusiast: The 9th Art, Smalltown USA, Wolf at the Door, YARDSALE!, Goodwill: The Flight of Emilio Carranza (2007), and De Luxe: The Tale of Blue Comet (2010). Goodwill has had the privilege to be screened as part of the Smithsonian exhibition “Our Journeys/Our Stories: Portraits of Latino Achievement” at the New Jersey Historical Society and won “Best Homegrown Documentary Feature” at the 2008 Garden State Film Festival. In 2009 he received Mexico’s Lindbergh-Carranza International Goodwill Award as a “Messenger of Peace” for his work on Goodwill. From February to August of 2010 Emmons created two short documentaries a week. The 52 short documentaries formed the weekly internet series MINICONCEPTDOCS and can be viewed on his YOUTUBE CHANNEL. Emmons teaches courses in film and media. His other documentaries include Weird as it is (2024), Game of Nim (2023), X9: CHØOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE (2022), Diagram for Delinquents (2014), De Luxe: The Tale of Blue Comet (2010) and Goodwill: The Flight of Emilio Carranza (2007). With partner Joe Tropea, he produced Fugazi’s Barber (2021) and Sickies Making Films (2019).
Meredith A. Bak
Affiliate Faculty
Associate Professor, Childhood Studies.
Meredith A. Bak is the author of Playful Visions: Optical Toys and the Emergence of Children’s Media Culture (MIT Press, 2020). Her work in media archaeology using visual and material culture methods investigates historical and contemporary discourses of children media, technology, and creativity. Her current projects explore the history and theory of animate toys and discourses of environmental sustainability in children’s media and material cultures.
Travis DuBose
Affiliate Faculty
Travis teaches classes focused on digital media and professional writing at Rutgers-Camden and serves as director of the Writing Program. His current research interest is the scholarship of teaching and learning, with recent work projects focusing on issues of civic engagement and digital capital. He also maintains creative interests in hypertext narratives and procedural generation. He was also founding director of the campus’s Writing and Design Lab.
Carla Giaudrone
Affiliate Faculty
Associate Professor of Spanish and Director of the Latin American and Latino Studies program. Her research explores the complexities of identity construction in 20th and 21st-century Latin American literature. She integrates digital humanities research into her courses by using open-source web publishing platforms like SCALAR and OMEKA. Author of La degeneración del Novecientos, her contributions extend to journals such as Revista Hispánica Moderna, Iberoamericana, and the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies.
Ashley Gimbal
Affiliate Faculty
A 2018 graduate of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Arizona State University, Dr. Gimbal’s research focuses on media framing audience effects, and how these elements alter the way news is created and shared. Dr. Gimbal teaches a range of courses focused on communication, journalism and media.
Holly Blackford Humes
Affiliate Faculty
Holly Blackford Humes teaches and publishes literary criticism on American, children’s, adolescent, and YA literature, film, and media. Her books include Out of this World: Why Literature Matters to Girls (2004), Mockingbird Passing: Closeted Traditions and Sexual Curiosities in Harper Lee’s Novel (2011), The Myth of Persephone in Girls’ Fantasy Literature (2011), Alice to Algernon: The Evolution of Child Consciousness in the Novel (2018), and edited volumes on the centenaries of Anne of Green Gables (2009) and My Antonia (2018). She is currently finishing a book on animation and youth.
Nicole Karapanagiotis
Affiliate Faculty
Nicole Karapanagiotis is Associate Professor of Religion in the Department of Philosophy and Religion. Her research areas include South Asian religion, devotional Hinduisms, Indian philosophy, religion and digital media, and religion and marketing. She is the author of Branding Bhakti: Krishna Consciousness and the Makeover of a Movement (Indiana University Press, 2021). She has won the Helen Crovetto Award for Excellence in the Study of New Religious Movements with Ties to South Asia and the Rutgers University, Presidential Fellowship for Teaching Excellence Award.
Timothy M. Knievel
Affiliate Faculty
Tim is an assistant teaching professor who has worked in the Rutgers-Camden Department of Political Science since the fall of 2012. Since 2017, he has regularly offered a course called Introduction to Digital Politics, which explores the historical development of the internet and web, along with its impact on American Politics. In the spring of 2018, Tim served as the acting associate director of the Digital Studies Center at Rutgers-Camden.
Allison Page
Affiliate Faculty
Allison Page is an Associate Professor of Media Studies in the Department of English and Communication. Her first monograph, “Media and the Affective Life of Slavery,” was published by the University of Minnesota Press in March 2022. She is currently working on her next monograph, “The Cultural Politics of Policing,” which historicizes the entanglement of race, policing, and media technologies in the United States.
Jillian Sayre
Affiliate Faculty
Jillian Sayre is Associate Professor in the Department of English and Communication and Director of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH). She teaches courses on contemporary theory, ecocriticism and environmental writing, Native American literature, and gothic and horror writing. She often teaches “Weird Books,” which explores experimental literature and games that challenge the traditional structure of both narrative and the book. Dr. Sayre has also published research on video games and the attention economy of networked life.
Claire Stricklin
Affiliate Faculty
Claire Stricklin is an Assistant Teaching Professor of English & Communication at Rutgers University-Camden. Her teaching and her research are both centered on storytelling in hybrid environments. By examining the shifts in emergent behavior that appear when play moves from the analog to the digital world, her work seeks to articulate the complex relationships that form between people, formal systems, and networks of power.
Mark Zaki
Affiliate Faculty
Mark Zaki’s work ranges from traditional chamber music to interactive intermedia, and music for film. He has been a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Sheffield (UK) and has also been honored with awards and recognition from the International Society of Contemporary Music, Musica Nova (Prague), a Rutgers University Board of Trustees Fellowship for Scholarly Excellence, and a Mellon Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. Zaki holds a Ph.D. degree from Princeton University and is currently Professor of Music at Rutgers where he has been a member of the faculty since 2008.
Researchers
Isabella DeGaetano
Isabella is a Senior at Rutgers University-Camden studying Pure Mathematics and Digital Studies. She works on the R-Cade project. Isabella hopes to become a high school math teacher when she graduates and carry on to pursue a masters degree in Mathematics.
Samantha Jacobs
Samantha is a Senior Film and Digital Studies major, planning to graduate in May of 2025. She currently works at the Digital Studies Center on outreach, and hopes to work in the film industry as a producer post graduation.
Wayne Reynolds
Wayne Reynolds is a Senior here at Rutgers. His main role at the Digital Studies Center is working with the Well-Played program. Outside of school, he is an aspiring writer, working on his dreams to become a show-runner.
Kemy Rodriguez
Kemy is a Junior student pursuing a major in English and minors in Digital Studies and Political Science. At DiSC he works with the Well Played team and hopes to become an ESL teacher.
Tyler Walker
Tyler is currently a Junior here at Rutgers Camden and he is a film major. He joined the digital studies Well-Played team in Fall 2023 and outside of school he is an artist and a songwriter who is in pursuit of a career in Music, Screenwriting or Directing.
Fellows
Each year, DiSC invites applications for Digital Studies Fellowships. Fellows commit to teaching in the Digital Studies program while also doing research. Residency is not required, and fellows can propose online courses.
2019-2020 Fellows
2018-2019 Fellows
2017-2018 Fellows
2016-2017 Fellows
2015-2016 Fellows