Press "Enter" to skip to content

Raiford Guins

Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, Adjunct Professor of Informatics, Director of the Cultural Studies Program

Contact Information

Office: M030-D Office Hours: W 9:00 – 11:00 By Appointment Email: rguins@iu.edu Website: raifordguins.com

Research and Creative Interests

  • video game history and preservation
  • design culture and history
  • history and philosophy of technology
  • cultural studies of technology
  • cultural and contemporary history
  • life history of objects and material culture

Biography

I am a Leeds United supporter. In my day-job I am a Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the Media School, Indiana University.  I also co-edit the MIT Press Game Histories Book Series with Henry Lowood and ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories also with Lowood and Laine Nooney.

I have written the following books: Game After: A Cultural Study of Video Game Afterlife (MIT Press, 2014),Edited Clean Version: Technology and the Culture of Control(University of Minnesota Press, 2009), and co-edited The Object Reader (with Fiona Candlin, Routledge, 2009) and Popular Culture: A Reader(with Omayra Zaragoza CruzSage, 2005). Recently I co-edited Debugging Game History: A Critical Lexicon (MIT Press, 2016) with Henry Lowood. My writings on game history appear in many journals and magazines including: American Journal of Play, Cabinet, Design Issues, Design and Culture, Game Studies, Journal of Design History, Journal of Visual Culture, and Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture.  Many of my articles can be downloaded via academia.edu

In addition to published research, my creative labor also takes the form of consultancy work for museums that collect and exhibit games.

My next book,  Atari Design: Impressions on a Cultural Form, 1972 – 1979, is forthcoming with  Bloomsbury Academic Press in 2020.Future writing plans include a collection devoted to EA Sport’s FIFA and a short book on football and cultural practices tentatively entitled, Feeling Leeds.

In my leisure time I collect vinyl records, hang out with my son, and support the Sweden National Football Team and Leeds United— “Until The World Stops Going Round”. MOT/ALAW