Navigating a Complex Space: An Interview with Henry Jenkins

betsy brey (author)

Henry Jenkins (contributions by)

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Metadata
Title	Navigating a Complex Space
Subtitle	An Interview with Henry Jenkins
Contributor	betsy brey (author)
DOI	https://doi.org/10.53288/0441.1.26
Landing page	https://punctumbooks.com/titles/historiographies-of-game-studies-what-it-has-been-what-it-could-be/
License	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
Copyright	betsy brey
Publisher	punctum books
Published on	2025-07-25
Long abstract	Henry Jenkins is Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts and Education at the University of Southern California—or as he likes to put it, “Professor of Miscellaneous Studies” or just “media scholar at USC.” A prolific author, Jenkins has author and editor more than 20 books including Textual Poachers, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Fans, Gamers, Bloggers, and most recently, Comics and Stuff in addition to hundreds of articles on a variety all sorts of pop culture and digital culture subjects, looking at fan communities, comics, the internet, film, and much more, including a very active period working on video games, writing well-known and well-cited pieces such as “Games as Narrative Architecture,” “Games: The New Lively Art,” and “Popular Culture as Politics, Politics as Popular Culture.” Jenkins, however, no longer considers himself a game scholar—an interesting distinction. This raises the question, “what does it mean to do game studies?,” in this interview Jenkins and I discuss the roots of game studies as an area of study and its development into a unique and sometimes baffling field. Reflecting on his journey through the development of the field, Jenkins describes the spaces of game studies as they were shifting from an area closely aligned with industry and popular culture towards a more isolated academic field pushed away from development spaces. From the sparking of his interest in play and spatial properties of games, to his defense of video games in front of the US Senate, to his scapegoated position in the ludology/narratology debate, Jenkins has seen the field from many perspectives—most importantly, he sees the field from outside of it now.
Page range	pp. 579–608
Print length	30 pages
Language	English (Original)

Contributors

betsy brey

(author)

PhD candidate at University of Waterloo

betsy brey (she/her) is a PhD candidate in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. Her research focuses on queering narratology in video games. She is particularly interested in the intersections of game play and narrative structure, and how game stories are perceived and constructed by communities of fans. Focusing on games and communities like Dragon Age, Skyrim, Five Nights at Freddy’s, Twitch Plays Pokemon, or Critical Role, Betsy’s research takes an intersectional approach to games and game narratives. Additionally, her work examines the social and cultural practices of the communities that play or enjoy these games, including questions of collaboration, digital labor, canonicity, and the cultural economies of fans and fandoms.

Henry Jenkins

(contributions by)

Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts at University of Southern California

https://henryjenkins.org/

Henry Jenkins is the author or editor of twenty books on various aspects of media and popular culture. Among his best known works are Textual Poachers: Television Fans, Participatory Culture (Routledge, 1992), Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York University Press, 2008), Spreadable Media: Creating Meaning and Value in a Networked Culture (New York University Press, 2013), By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism (New York University Press, 2016), Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination: Case Studies of Creative Social Change (New York University Press, 2020), and Comics and Stuff (New York University Press, 2020).