Patrick Jagoda works on the network as an emergent mode for understanding (aesthetically, structurally, and descriptively) the late twentieth and early twenty-first century world. His current project specifically examines “network aesthetics” through numerous narrative and procedural forms, including novels (Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon), films (Stephen Gaghan’s film Syriana), television shows (HBO’s The Wire), computer games (Impact Games’s PeaceMaker), virtual worlds (Blizzard’s World of Warcraft), and Alternate Reality Games (Jane McGonigal’s Superstruct). His previous publications have concerned a variety of topics, including the cultural status of transmedia storytelling in the early twenty-first century, the American doctrine of network-centric warfare, the literary genre of steampunk, the relationship between the American novel and Hollywood in the 1920s and 30s, and the fictional cosmos of Don DeLillo.

Patrick sees his scholarship as inextricably interrelated with his creative work. In recent years, he has worked on projects that contribute to new media learning, digital storytelling, and transmedia game design. With a group of University of Chicago students he directed the Alternate Reality Game Oscillation in 2011. In this game, players encountered an interactive narrative that was conveyed through media old and new, including paper flyers, sidewalk drawings, websites, a Facebook page, emails, a text-adventure game, chatbot interactions, IRC, cassette tapes, and a live performance. Patrick is also involved in an ongoing collaboration with Melissa Gilliam (University of Chicago Professor in the Departments of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Pediatrics) on the Game Changer initiative. This project uses digital storytelling and game production to promote a participatory and systems-oriented form of sexual health learning aimed at adolescents.

Selected Publications and Projects

Publications

“Wired.” Critical Inquiry (Fall 2011): http://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/wired

“Terror Networks and the Aesthetics of Interconnection.” Social Text 105 (2010): 65-90.

“Between: An Interview with Jason Rohrer.” Critical Inquiry, Online Feature (Fall 2011): http://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/the_jason_rohrer_interview

“The Transmedia Turn in Popular Culture: The Case of Comic-Con.” Post45, Contemporaries (August 2011): http://post45.research.yale.edu/archives/1089

“Speculative Security.” From Cybersecurity to Cyberwar. Ed. Derek S. Reveron. Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press (Forthcoming).

“Hollywood and the Novel.” The American Novel 1870-1940. Volume 6 of The Oxford History of the Novel in English. Ed. Priscilla Wald and Michael A. Elliott. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Forthcoming).

“Clacking Control Societies: Steampunk, History, and the Difference Engine of Escape.” Neo-Victorian Studies 3:1 (2010), pp. 46-71 (www.neovictorianstudies.com).

“The Terror Complex: Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis.” Exit 9 Vol. IX: Textuality and Terror (2008): 93-116.

Digital Media Projects

Oscillation (transmedia game): http://vimeo.com/26438531

Game Changer (digital media and health initiative): http://gamechanger.uchicago.edu/