EXAM LIST

This list is a starting point for the creation of the Ph.D. Qualifying Exam List. Digital Media Ph.D. students choose 50 works from each of the following 4 main categories, for a total of 200 works. The subcategories are representation of possible areas of interests.

1. Media Theory and Related Theoretical Contexts

Anthologies, Texts, Reference Books
General Works
Body/Mind/Technology
Language and Linguistics
Intellectual Property
Narrative
Philosophy and Aesthetics
Post-Modernism
Technology and Culture
Visualization and Visual Culture
Other Areas of Media-Related Investigation

Sample bibliography in this area may be found on the Exam List Part1 document.

2. Media Traditions

Architecture, Urban Design, Spatial Design
Comics, Animation, and Visual Storytelling
(Cyber) Narrative
Film Art
Graphic Design / Information Visualization
History of Writing, Print, and Reading
Modern and Post-Modern Art
Performance Art / Performance Studies
Photography
Play and Games
Radio and Television
Other Areas of Media Traditions and Forms

Sample bibliography in this area may be found on the Exam List Part2 document.

3. Digital Media Forms and Technologies

General Works
Computer Games and Interactive Narrative
Digital Art and Performance
Digital Characters
Electronic Fiction and Poetry
Information Archives and Information Design
Mixed and Augmented Reality
MOO's, Community, and Synchronous Communications Forms
Virtual Reality
Web Design, Hypertext, Hypermedia
Other Digital Forms

Sample bibliography in this area may be found on the Exam List Part3 document.

4. Self-Defined Specialty Area

Examples of specialty (intented to be suggestive only; this category is for the student to define, since it should prefigure the issues raised in the thesis):

a sub-category of an existing digital category, such as text-based computer games, or mixed-reality installations in museums.
an in-depth study of a particular work and its related issues, such as a consideration of the Sims within the tradition of specific gaming and social practices; a consideration of Perseus and related educational archives, including its technical history, social dynamics, usability issues, etc.
an in-depth study of the ouvre of a particular digital practioner, such as Douglas Engelbart, Shigeru Miyamoto.
an in-depth study of a non-digital practioner as a way of illuminating potential or actual digital genres, e.g. Faulkner or Tolkien and the encyclopedic storyteller.