Curtis L. Maughan

Curtis L. Maughan is a PhD candidate in the Department of German, Russian and East European Studies at Vanderbilt University. His dissertation project examines Walter Benjamin’s writing on flanerie in the context of open world gameplay trends and game design practices. In the spring of 2019, Curtis was awarded the Philip Rein Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching for incorporating digital technologies in the classroom. From 2016 – 2019, he managed the Master’s program in Game Development and Research at the Cologne Game Lab, where he hosted an academic game jam on walking simulators in cooperation with the Kunstmuseum Bonn in the fall of 2018. Curtis has published on contemporary Austrian documentary film, the German reception of Shakespeare, and the novellas of Thomas Mann and Heinrich von Kleist. His broader research interests include surveillance and interactivity, history and (digital) games, and the pedagogical potential of the game jam.