TreaAndrea is a dedicated and innovative visual scholar whose anti-racist academic and community-grounded work has made a significant impact on a range of audiences.
TreaAndrea Russworm is a Professor in the Interactive Media & Games Division at the University of Southern California. She is the founder of Radical Play (a games-based public humanities initiative and afterschool program), and she has been a professor and Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at UMass Amherst. A prolific author and editor, Russworm is a Series Editor of Power Play: Games, Politics, Culture (Duke University Press). She is the author or editor of three books: Blackness is Burning; Gaming Representation; and Theorizing Tyler Perry. With research expertise in digital visual culture, video games, and popular African American media, Professor Russworm’s scholarship and interviews have also been shared on CNN, The History Channel, Turner Classic Movies, in podcasts, and on streaming platforms like Twitch. She is a video game Hall of Fame voter, and she is currently writing a new monograph on The Sims and a book on race and the politics of play.
TreaAndrea’s visual research methods centre on Black audiences, game play practices, cultural studies theory, close readings, and historical contextualization. Blackness is Burning is the monograph that best exhibits her approach as it relates to film, television, and history. However, more recent work like the book Gaming Representation shows how her methods now include a focus on games but also on Black media studies as a way forward. Her newest book—Antiracist Futures: Race, Games, and the Speculative Imagination is now out for review with Duke University Press. This work is explicitly about antiracism, representation, and game design.
TreaAndrea is passionate about bringing her work and scholarly interests to non-academic audiences. Her research has led to her co-creating of the Black Games Archive (a digital humanities project that is launching late April 2023). She is also the founder of an afterschool program, Radical Play, that teaches high school students how to creatively and critically engage with games and other visual media. For examples of her public engagement through Radical Play, see: https://treaandrea.squarespace.com. Finally, TreaAndrea has appeared on CNN, The History Channel, and Turner Classic Movies to discuss racism and visual culture in ways that are accessible to a broader audience.
