Dr. Jon Saklofske

Position: Professor
Office: BAC 423
Phone: (902) 585-1442
Email: jon.saklofske@acadiau.ca
Website: (currently being updated)

 

 

Research interests: I’m insatiably curious about intersections between media forms and cultural perceptions. In addition to experimenting with virtual environments and games as tools for academic research, communication and pedagogy, my other research interests include environmental storytelling in theme parks, values-based game design, alternative platforms for open social scholarship, and the critical potential of feminist war games.

Teaching: In my first year courses, I give students an opportunity to engage critically and carefully with a broad range of literature and media, including poetry, plays, short stories, novels, electronic literature, interactive fiction, and digital games.  These classes are largely discussion-based and allow students to gain confidence in and to fully support their own opinions and voices through response papers, essays, a branching narrative assignment, and a creative translation. My upper-year classes also follow a discussion format, exposing students to a broad range of literary examples, and encouraging a breadth and depth of close reading, theoretical approaches, and historical contextualization.

Selected Publications and Honours: I have recently co-edited and contributed to the book Feminist War Games? which is pictured here.

You can also watch my TEDx talk “Creating Worlds Together” here:

Courses Recently Taught:
Writing and reading critically, The Romantic imagination, Romantic women, Literature of the Romantic Period, Narrative identities: The relationships between story and selfhood, Pursuing perfection: Narratives of determination, trauma, and resilience, Mediating monsters: The persistence and prevalence of horror stories, Modelling difficulty, prototyping utopia: William Blake’s illuminated books, Vast narratives and transmedia storytelling: Navigating in and between fictional worlds.