{{short description|American game studies scholar}}
{{Infobox scholar | name = Bo Ruberg | image = | imagesize = | alt = | caption = | fullname = | othernames = | birth_name = <!-- Use only if different from full/othernames --> | birth_date = | birth_place = | death_date = | death_place = | death_cause = | residence = | era = | region = | workplaces = University of California Irvine | alma_mater = University of California Berkeley | thesis_title = | thesis_url = | thesis_year = | doctoral_advisor = | doctoral_students = | notable_students = | school_tradition = | main_interests = video games, Queer theory, Cultural Studies | principal_ideas = | major_works = Video Games Have Always Been Queer (2019), The Queer Games Avant-Garde (2020), Sex Dolls at Sea: Imagined Histories of Sexual Technologies (2022) | awards = Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Stonewall Book Award (2021), SCMS Anne Friedberg Innovative Scholarship Award (2022) | influences = | influenced = | website = | footnotes = }} '''Bo Ruberg''' (born 1985) is an American game studies scholar and professor at the University of California, Irvine in the department of Film and Media Studies.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Bo Ruberg |url=https://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile/?facultyId=6554 |access-date=2023-06-17 |website=UC Irvine - Faculty Profile System |language=en}}</ref> They<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://ourglasslake.com/about/|title=Bio & Contact| website=Our Glass Lake}}</ref> are known for their work on queer theory and video games. They are the author of ''Video Games Have Always Been Queer'', ''The Queer Games Avant-Garde'', and ''Sex Dolls at Sea: Imagined Histories of Sexual Technologies'', as well as the editor of ''Queer Game Studies''. From 2023 to 2027, they are the co-editor-in-chief, with Liz Elcessor, of the ''Journal of Cinema and Media Studies''. They are also one of the co-founders of the Queerness in Games Conference.
== Education == Ruberg received their Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California at Berkeley.
== Research == Ruberg's academic work focuses on queer game studies, a subfield of game studies that deals with LGBTQ representation and queer theory.<ref>{{Citation |last=Harper |first=Todd |title=Queer Game Studies: Young But Not New |date=2018 |url=http://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-3-319-90542-6_1 |work=Queerness in Play |pages=1–13 |editor-last=Harper |editor-first=Todd |access-date=2023-06-17 |place=Cham |publisher=Springer International Publishing |language=en |doi=10.1007/978-3-319-90542-6_1 |isbn=978-3-319-90541-9 |last2=Taylor |first2=Nicholas |last3=Adams |first3=Meghan Blythe |editor2-last=Adams |editor2-first=Meghan Blythe |editor3-last=Taylor |editor3-first=Nicholas|url-access=subscription }}</ref>
Their second book, ''The Queer Games Avant-Garde'' (Duke University Press, 2020), won the 2021 Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award, a Stonewall Book Award, from the American Library Association.<ref>{{Cite web |last=admin |date=2009-09-09 |title=Stonewall Book Awards List |url=https://www.ala.org/rt/rrt/award/stonewall/honored |access-date=2023-06-17 |website=Round Tables |language=en}}</ref> Their third book, ''Sex Dolls at Sea: Imagined Histories of Sexual Technologies'' (MIT Press, 2022), won the 2023 Anne Friedberg Innovative Scholarship Award from the Society of Cinema and Media Studies.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Congratulations to Professor Bo Ruberg for Winning the Anne Friedberg Innovative Scholarship Award |url=https://www.humanities.uci.edu/news/congratulations-professor-bo-ruberg-winning-anne-friedberg-innovative-scholarship-award |access-date=2023-06-17 |website=www.humanities.uci.edu |language=en}}</ref>
Ruberg co-edited, with Adrienne Shaw, ''Queer Game Studies'' (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), an anthology of essays by academics, journalists, and game designers about queer representation and queer theory in video games. The collection was reviewed favorably by the LA Review of Books and Lambda Literary.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Degnan |first=Marcus Tran |date=3 August 2017 |title=Gaming Gone Queer |url=https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/gaming-gone-queer/ |access-date=2019-02-21 |website=Los Angeles Review of Books}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Tunney |first=Alex |date=2017-06-15 |title='Queer Game Studies' Edited by Bonnie Ruberg and Adrienne Shaw |url=https://www.lambdaliterary.org/reviews/nonfiction/06/15/queer-game-studies-edited-bonnie-ruberg-adrienne-shaw/ |access-date=2019-02-21 |website=Lambda Literary}}</ref>
== Other work == Ruberg is a co-founder of the Queerness in Games Conference, "a community-oriented, internationally-recognized event dedicated to exploring the intersection of '''LGBTQ issues and games'''" that ran from 2013 to 2020.<ref>{{Cite web |title=What is QGCon? {{!}} |url=https://qgcon.com/what-is-qgcon/ |access-date=2023-06-17 |language=en-US}}</ref> From 2005 to 2009, they were a technology journalist writing for such publications as ''The Village Voice'', ''Wired'', ''The Economist'', and ''Forbes''.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Ruberg |first=Bo |date=November 2021 |title=Bo Ruberg, Ph.D., CV |url=https://ourglasslake.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Ruberg-CV-November-2021-for-web.pdf |access-date=2023-06-17}}</ref>
==Awards and honors== * 2021 Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award, a Stonewall Book Award * 2022 SCMS Anne Friedberg Innovative Scholarship Award
== Selected publications == * Ruberg, B. (2022). ''Sex Dolls at Sea: Imagined Histories of Sexual Technologies''. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. * Ruberg, B. (2020). ''The Queer Games Avant-Garde''. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. * Ruberg, B. (2019). ''Video Games Have Always Been Queer''. New York, NY: NYU Press.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Stang |first=Sarah |date=2021-07-04 |title=Video games have always been queer: by Bonnie Ruberg, New York City, NY: New York University Press, 2019, 269 pp., $30 (paperback), {{text|ISBN}}: 9781479843749 |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2020.1797141 |journal=Information, Communication & Society |language=en |volume=24 |issue=9 |pages=1320–1322 |doi=10.1080/1369118X.2020.1797141 |issn=1369-118X|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Sanders |last2=Mario J. |year=2020 |title=Review of Video Games Have Always Been Queer, by Bonnie Ruberg |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/754469 |journal=QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=141-144 |via=Project MUSE}}</ref> * Brewer, Joanna, Bo Ruberg, Amanda Cullen, and Christopher Persaud (eds, 2023). ''Real Life in Real Time: Live Streaming Culture''. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. * Ruberg, B. and Adrienne Shaw (eds, 2017). ''Queer Game Studies''. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota University Press.
== References == {{Reflist}}
== External links == * {{official website|https://ourglasslake.com/}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Ruberg, Bo}} Category:1985 births Category:Living people Category:University of California, Irvine faculty Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni Category:Queer theorists Category:Video game researchers Category:21st-century American non-fiction writers