Degrees

2016, MA English, Loughborough University

2014, BA English, Loughborough University

Bio

Doug Stark is a media and game studies scholar completing a Ph.D. in English at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. At UNC, he works for the Digital Literacy and Communications Lab as the Game Research Coordinator and teaches courses on film, video games, comics, digital media, and writing. Primarily, Doug’s research concerns twentieth and twenty-first century forms of play and game, treating them as both expressions of contemporary social conditions and means of adapting to our technocultural environments. His dissertation – “Playing with Habit: The Biopolitics of Games Under Neoliberalism” – addresses the power games exercise over life by examining the habits they promote in colonial, military, managerial, and entertainment contexts. Find his forthcoming and published work in journals Extrapolation, Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, Post-45, Eludamos, Qui Parle, Leonardo, and Configurations, and in edited collections Playing the Field, Encyclopedia of Video Games, and Depictions of Power.

Publications:

• Stark, Doug. “Exercises in Humility: Gregory Bateson on Contingency, Croquet, and Revising Habits of Thought Through Play.”Leonardo, 56 (1) 2023: 58-63.
• Stark, Doug. “Better Problems: Neoliberalism, Strategic Achronicity, and the Experimental Games To-Be-Made.” Qui Parle, 30 (2) 2021: 399-419.
• Stark, Doug. “Video Game Novels.” Encyclopedia of Video Games: The Culture, Technology and Art of Gaming, 2nd ed., edited by Mark J. P. Wolf, Greenwood Press, 2021: 1104-1107.
• Stark, Doug. “Training for the Military? Some Historical Considerations Towards a Media Philosophical Computer Game Philosophy.” Eludamos, 11 (1) 2021: 125–144.
• Stark, Doug and Teresa O’ Rourke. “The Lost Futures of BoJack and Diane.” Post45, special cluster “Leaving Hollywoo: Essays After BoJack Horseman,” 2020.
• Stark, Doug. “Unsettling Embodied Literacy in QWOP the Walking Simulator.” Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, 12 (1) 2020: 49–67.
• Stark, Doug. “‘A More Realistic View:’ Reimagining Sympoietic Practice in Octavia Butler’s Parable Series.” Extrapolation, 61 (1-2), 2020: 151–171.
• Stark, Doug. “Ludic Literature: Ready Player One as Didactic Fiction for the Neoliberal Subject.” Playing the Field: Video Games and American Studies, ed. by S. Pöhlmann, De Gruyter, 2019: 153-173.

Awards

• Digital Dissertation Fellowship, Carolina Digital Humanities, UNC Chapel Hill, Spring 2023
• Institute of the Arts and Humanities (IAH) Grant, “Critical Game Studies Exchange,” Spring 2023
• Richard Brooke Scholarship, UNC Chapel Hill, 2022-2023
• The Bruns Essay Prize, Society for Literature, Science & the Arts, 2022
• Hobby Departmental Dissertation Fellowship, UNC Chapel Hill, Fall 2022
• IAH Grant, UNC/KCL “Media Aesthetics” Speaker Series and Working Group, Fall 2022, Spring 2023
• Game Studies Research Award, DLC lab, UNC Chapel Hill, Spring 2022, Fall 2022
• Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Fellow, UNC Chapel Hill, Spring 2022
• IAH Grant, UNC/KCL “Digital Aesthetics” Speaker Series, Fall 2021
• Games and Cultures Humanities Lab Fellow, Duke University, 2019-2020
• Santander Postgraduate Scholarship, Loughborough University, UK, 2014-2016

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2010, MA English, DePaul University

2008, BA English, Birmingham-Southern College

Bio

Originally from LaGrange, GA, Paul is primarily interested in American literature from 1865 to the present and its intersections with the health humanities, especially literary trauma studies. He is primarily interested in the ethical and political implications of depictions of trauma in literature and other media, especially acts of violence and atrocity for both perpetrators and survivors. In addition to his scholarly work, he also teaches sections of ENGL 105 and ENGL 105i: Writing in Health and Medicine, has tutored for the athletic department, has served for several years as the Fiction Editor for The Carolina Quarterly, and currently serves as the Co-Director for UNC’s Literature, Medicine, and Culture Colloquium (LMCC), https://lmcc.web.unc.edu/. He also writes original pieces of fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and drama as well as scripts for promotional videos and short narrative or documentary films.

Publications:

• Smith, Jonathan and Paul Blom. “Those Who Don’t Return: Improving Efforts to Address Tuberculosis Among Former Miners in Southern Africa.” NEW SOLUTIONS: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy, vol. 29, no. 1, May 2019, pp. 76-104.
• Blom, Paul. “‘It wasn’t any good diving unless you had a big hammer’: Psychoanalyzing Hemingway’s ‘After the Storm.’” The Sea in the Literary Imagination: Global Perspectives, edited by Ben P. Robertson, Ekaterina V. Kobeleva, Shannon W. Thompson, and Katona D. Weddle. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Jan. 2019.
• Blom, Paul. “‘A trap of our own making’: Mark Twain and the Mechanized Warfare of King Arthur’s Court.” War, Myths, and Fairy Tales, edited by Sara Buttsworth and Maartje Abbenhuis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, Jan. 2017.
• See also https://pauleblom.com/research-and-other-works/publications/.

Teaching Awards

• Member of Peer Mentoring Committee (PMC) for graduate student instructors, UNC-Chapel Hill, Dept. of English and Comparative Literature, Writing Program, 2023 – 2024
• ENGL 105 Programmatic Assessment Professional Development Award recipient, UNC-Chapel Hill, Dept. of English and Comparative Literature, Writing Program, 2023
• UNC-Chapel Hill Writing Program Professional Development Award Recipient, 2021
• UNC-Chapel Hill Writing Program Professional Development Award Recipient, 2020
• UNC-Chapel Hill Writing Program Professional Development Award Recipient, 2019

Awards

• GPSG Travel Award recipient for travel to preside over a panel at MLA’s Annual Convention, 2023 in San Francisco, CA in Jan. 2023, Graduate and Professional Student Government (GPSG) at UNC-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, 2023
• Departmental Travel Grant Award recipient for travel to preside over a panel at MLA’s Annual Convention, 2022 in Washington, DC in Jan. 2022, Department of English and Comparative Literature at UNC-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, 2020
• Departmental Summer Fellowship Service Award to provide administrative support at the Digital Literacy and Communications Lab, 2020
• Departmental Travel Grant Award Recipient for travel to present at annual MELUS Conference in New Orleans, LA, April 2020
• Recipient of multiple grants for “Popular Narratives and the Experience of War,” UNC-Chapel Hill, from The Graduate School; Humanities for the Public Good; The College of Arts & Sciences, Division of Fine Arts & Humanities; The College of Arts & Sciences, Division of Social Sciences & Global Programs; Carolina Veterans Resource Center; Department of English and Comparative Literature; Curriculum in Peace, War and Defense; Department of History; and Center for the Study of the American South, 2019

Curriculum Vitae / Resume