Julie Johannes Headshot

Julie Johannes

Principal Lecturer

Department of English
College of Liberal Arts

585-475-2467
Office Hours
Fall 2019 MW 10-1115a
Office Location

Julie Johannes

Principal Lecturer

Department of English
College of Liberal Arts

Education

BA, State University College at Geneseo; MA, University of Rochester

Bio

Computer games, generally, and Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs), specifically, have changed the ways that our students engineer their lives. Previously seen as exclusive, antisocial, and 'hardcore' diversions, these games are now a component of their daily schedule. Once relegated to dank basements and dark bedrooms, student-gamers are proliferating our campuses and widely gaining both popular and scholarly acceptance. Embracing rather than decrying such newfound openness reveals a promising space for 21st century research and pedagogy.

My professional and research interests include Game Studies, Video Games and/as Literature, Digital Humanities, Autopathobiography, Neuroatypicals in Popular Culture, Don DeLillo, Paul Auster, and Postmodernism.

When I'm not teaching, reading, writing, or researching (or even when I am), I'm a runner. Most noteworthy is that I've run a marathon and multiple 13.1s. I try to do a 5k, 10k, or 15k at least once a month, just to keep things interesting. I enjoy international travel, mystery novels, eurogames, gourmet cooking, playing badminton, attending Canadian Football League (CFL) games, and cheering on the Vancouver Canucks.

585-475-2467

Currently Teaching

ENGL-150
3 Credits
This First Year Writing Intensive course is designed to develop first-year students’ proficiency in analytical writing, rhetorical reading, and critical thinking by focusing on particular uses of narrative. Students will read, understand, and interpret a variety of texts representing different cultural perspectives and/or academic disciplines. Increasingly, scholars, artists, public figures and other professionals recognize the value of using stories across genres to inform analytical practice. Students will gain informed practice in using narrative in different disciplines, and become aware of storytelling as one among a number of rhetorical strategies for inquiry. Students will be expected to give presentations as well as write papers both in response to the reading material and in services of their own independent arguments.
ENGL-210
3 Credits
In this course, students will study literature, movements, and writers within their cultural contexts and in relation to modes of literary production and circulation. Students will hone their skills as attentive readers and will engage with literary analysis and cultural criticism. The class will incorporate various literary, cultural, and interdisciplinary theories--such as psychoanalytic theory, feminist and queer theories, critical race studies, and postcolonial theory. Using these theoretical frameworks in order to study texts, students will gain a strong foundation for analyzing the ways literary language functions and exploring the interrelations among literature, culture, and history. In doing so, they will engage issues involving culture, identity, language, ethics, race, gender, class, and globalism, among many others.
ENGL-302
3 Credits
The short story has been one of the most dynamic and innovative genres in literature. This course uses the genre of the short story to provide material for critical commentary and cultural understanding. Students read a variety for short stories to develop an understanding of the form and its impact on culture.
ENGL-309
3 Credits
This course explores the evolution of an influential literary form (the short story, drama, poetry, autobiographical literature, or the novel). Reading a series of variations on this literary form, likely bridging cultural or historical contexts or themes, the course develops critical perspectives and artistic insights into this genre of writing. Criticism and theory appropriate to the genre will be discussed as a way to understand the form, its social functions, and its cultural and political significance. The course can be taken up to two times, for a total of 6 semester credit hours, as long as the topics are different.
ENGL-373
3 Credits
This course introduces students to the field of adaptation studies and explores the changes that occur as particular texts such as print, radio, theatre, television, film, and videogames move between various cultural forms and amongst different cultural contexts. The course focuses upon works that have been disseminated in more than one medium.
ENGL-374
3 Credits
Who studies game studies? Writing in games can often be hit or miss, so relying on an established story can provide support and allows the medium to evolve to cover more interesting stories than the typical mass-offering affairs. Still, literature and games are fundamentally different media- and as such these differences must be accounted for when mapping literature onto video games. Will game studies ever be as highly regarded as is critical scholarship on, say, literature? Can a video game possess substantial literary merit? Can a video game offer the same depth of characters and insight into the human condition as a novel? Do video games invite the player to do the same things that works of great literature invite the reader to do: identify with the characters, invite him to judge them and quarrel with them, and to experience their joys and sufferings as the reader’s own? In this course we will have these conversations and then go beyond. We will examine works that have visually evocative and varied settings; narratives that make readers wonder what is going to happen next; and a rapidly changing culture that prompts even more questions than it answers.