Zachary N. Whalen

Zach Whalen
  • Asst Professor - New Media
  • Engl, Ling & Communication
  • Academic Degrees

    • B.A., Carson-Newman College
    • M.A., Ph.D., University of Florida

Zach Whalen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Linguistics and Communication where his teaching focuses on the critical study and practice of digital media in a variety of genres, including video games, electronic literature, comics, and other media. He has published journal articles and scholarly essays on video games, including an article in Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research, and book chapters on Silent Hill, Grand Theft Auto, and early game consoles. With Laurie N. Taylor, Zach Whalen is the co-editor of Playing the Past: History and Nostalgia in Video Games, published by Vanderbilt University Press in 2008.

  • English Faculty Present at MLA Conference

    English Faculty Present at MLA Conference[caption id="attachment_18413" align="alignleft" width="150"]Gary Richards Gary Richards[/caption] Two professors and one recent alumnus of the Department of English, Linguistics, and Communication presented at the Modern Language Association Conference that met Jan. 3 through 6 in Boston, Mass. Assistant Professor Zach Whalen presented the paper "OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and the Vestigial Aesthetics of Machine Vision" on the panel Reading the Invisible and Unwanted in Old and New Media. Associate Professor Gary Richards presented the paper "Tennessee Williams and the Burden of Southern Sexuality Studies" on the panel The South and Sexuality. Alumnus Tyler Babbie, '08, presented the paper "Another Term: Richard Aldington and Imagism(e)" on the panel From Imagism to "Amygism" to Vorticism. [caption id="attachment_13163" align="alignleft" width="150"]Zach Whalen Zach Whalen[/caption]
  • Zach Whalen Presents Paper at Society for Literature, Science and the Arts

    Zach Whalen Presents Paper at Society for Literature, Science and the ArtsZach Whalen, assistant professor in the Department of English, Linguistics and Communication, presented a paper at the recent Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts conference, held this year in Milwaukee, Wis. The presentation, "A Counterfactual Historiography of Three Game Platforms," challenged the received metanarrative of game console generations. By way of a close reading of three less well-known consoles -- Channel F, Vectrex and Virtual Boy -- the paper explores the implications of an alternate history for video game devices.