Department head named for Public and Applied Humanities

June 9th, 2017

Dean Alain-Philippe Durand is very happy to announce Dr. Judd Ruggil as the founding head of the Department of Public and Applied Humanities (PAH) in the College of Humanities at the University of Arizona, effective July 31, 2017.

Judd Ruggill joined the UA in 2016 as part of the Computational Media Cluster initiative and as Associate Professor of Africana Studies. This summer he is joining the new department as Associate Professor of Public and Applied Humanities. He is also an affiliate faculty member of the School of Information, the School of Theatre, Film & Television, and the Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory. From 2008-2016, he was a faculty member in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Arizona State University and a member of the graduate faculty of the Department of English, the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication, the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Cultural and Literary Studies from the University of Arizona (2005), and co-directs the Learning Games Initiative, a transdisciplinary, inter-institutional research group he co-founded in 1999 to study, teach with, build, and archive computer games. 

Dr. Ruggill's research and teaching interests center on mass media history, theory, and business, with a particular emphasis on computer game technologies, play, and cultures. His essays have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies, and his books include Inside the Video Game Industry: Game Developers Talk About the Business of Play (Routledge, 2017), Tempest: Geometries of Play (U. of Michigan, 2015), AZ 100 Indie Film: A State of Arizona Centennial Celebration (Confluencenter/AZMAC, 2012), Gaming Matters: Art, Science, Magic, and the Computer Game Medium (U. of Alabama, 2011), The Computer Culture Reader (CSP, 2009), and Fluency in Play: Computer Game Design for Less Commonly Taught Language Pedagogy (CERCLL, 2008).