Campus Directory

Pronouns she/her

Division Arts Division

Department/College/Unit Film and Digital Media Department

Title Associate Professor
Provost, Porter College

Affiliation Faculty

Other UCSC Campus Affiliation Porter College

Faculty Type Regular Faculty

Areas of Expertise Visual Culture
Cultural Studies
Visual Arts
Video Games, Game Design, Game Studies
Game Studies
Contemporary Art
Contemporary Cinema
Digital Media
Diversity
Critical Theory

Web Site

Primary Office Location Communications Building
109

Office Hours for Students/ Office Hours email for appointment / email is the best way to reach me

Mail Stop Film and Digital Media

Biography, Education and Training

Soraya Murray (PhD Cornell) studies contemporary visual culture, especially film and video games. She is an Associate Professor in the Film + Digital Media Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her writings may be found in journals in the areas of contemporary art, film and digital culture, including venues such as Art Journal, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Public Art Review, Third Text, Open Library of Humanities, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, Feminist Media Histories, The Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, the European Journal of American Studies, Film Quarterly and Critical Inquiry.

Her essays are anthologized nationally and internationally, including most recently, EcoGames: Playful Perspectives on the Climate Crisis (Holland 2024), Reset (Italy 2023), Red Dead Redemption: History, Myth and Violence in the Video Game West (USA 2023) and Video Games and Spatiality in American Studies (Germany 2022). Murray joined the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies editorial board in 2023, and is a member of the critical/historical game studies journal ROMchip’s editorial group.

Murray’s book, On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space (I.B. Tauris, 2018, paperback Bloomsbury 2021), considers video games from a visual culture perspective and how they both mirror and are constitutive of larger societal fears, dreams, hopes and even complex struggles for recognition. Murray is currently co-editing an anthology with media and games scholar TreaAndrea Russworm on antiracist futures in games and play. She is also publishing a new book on anxiety films about technology from the 1970s to the present called Technothriller Films and the American Imagination.

Murray is currently the Provost of Porter College.

Ph.D., Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
M.A., Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
M.F.A., University of California, Irvine, CA
B.F.A., Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA

Summary of Expertise

Visual culture including digital media, film, video, and electronic games. Theories of technology and globalization. Media representations of technological and scientific advancement.

Research Interests

Visual culture including contemporary art, film and video games. Digital media art, theory, and criticism. Cultural Studies. Theories of technology and globalization. Intersectional approaches to politics of identity and representation.

Teaching Interests

Visual Studies, Digital Media and Culture; Cultural Studies; Media History and Theory; Contemporary Art; Film Studies; Issues of Cultural Globalization; Constructions of Identity; Video Games; Cultural Representations of Technology

Selected Publications

On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space (I.B. Tauris, hard 2018 / paper 2021)

Advisees, Grad Students & Researchers Fir, Ksenia (kfirsova)
Riley, Allen (ariley2)
Swigart, Saramanda (sswigart)

Courses FILM 80V Video Games and Visual Culture
FILM 80T Technothrillers
FILM 234 Toward an Ethics of New Media
FILM 194C New Media Seminar: Games, Representation, and the Cinematic