Degrees
2018, BA English & Computer Science, University of Virginia
Bio
DA Hall is an English & Comparative Literature PhD Candidate and Assistant Director of the Critical Game Studies Program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Their dissertation centers questions of historical development of genre, queer narrative temporalities, and radical community meaning-making within a genealogy of Japanese video games. DA Hall has written and presented extensively on FromSoftware’s Soulsborne series, and is currently co-organizing a volume that explores Japanese video game perspectives on Western worlding as aesthetic navigations of the contested cultural situation of Japan in the wake of World War II. As Assistant Director of the Critical Game Studies Program, they have worked to build the Greenlaw Gameroom, a game-focused classroom which centers accessibility and critical pedagogy, as well as the proposed Critical Game Studies Minor within the English & Comparative Literature department.
Publications:
- Hall, DA, “A Beginner’s Guide to Painted Worlds: The Haunted Mansion, Dark Souls III, and the Playground of Interpretation,” Proceedings of Digital Games Research Association, 2024.
- Hall, DA, “The Fallen Leaves Tell a Story: Elden Ring and the Emergence of the Soulslike Genre,” New Formations of Game Genres, Approaches to Digital Game Studies, Bloomsbury Publishing, forthcoming.
- Hall, DA, and Jones, Nicholas, “A War Without End: Industrial Warfare and the Negation of Individual Agency in Edward Berger’s Im Westen nichts Neues” Screening War: Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front in Context, forthcoming.
Teaching Awards
- Guest Instructor Award, 2023 – Department of American Studies, UNC
- Critical Game Studies Award, 2021 – Department of English & Comparative Literature, UNC
Awards
- 2024 Institute for the Arts and Humanities – King’s College London Collaboration Grant
- 2022 National Endowment for the Humanities – Humanities Initiative Grant: “Integrating Storytelling & Critical Game Studies into the Curriculum.”
- 2019 Center for Faculty Excellence – Lenovo Instructional Innovation Grant