A PDF copy of Bo’s curriculum vitae (updated November 2023) is available to view here.
The following is a selection of Bo’s publications. For a full list, please refer to their CV.
BOOKS (monographs)
Sex Dolls at Sea: Imagined Histories of Sexual Technologies (MIT Press, 2022)
– Winner of the 2023 Anne Friedberg Innovative Scholarship Award from the Society of Cinema and Media Studies
– Full book available to read online open access
The Queer Games Avant-Garde: How LGBTQ Game-Makers Are Reimagining the Medium of Video Games (Duke University Press, 2020)
– Winner of the 2021 Stonewall Book Award for Non-Fiction from the American Library Association
– Full book available to read online with institutional access
Video Games Have Always Been Queer (New York University Press, 2019)
– Full book available to read online with institutional access
BOOKS (edited volumes)
Real Life in Real Time: Live Streaming Culture (MIT Press, 2023), co-edited with Johanna Brewer, Amanda Cullen, and Christopher Persaud
-Full book available to read online open access
Queer Game Studies (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), co-edited with Adrienne Shaw
– Full book available to read online with institutional access
SPECIAL ISSUES (guest editor)
Television & New Media, “Gender and Sexuality in Live Streaming” (July 2022), co-edited with Johanna Brewer
Game Studies, “Queerness and Video Games: New Critical Perspectives on LGBTQ Issues, Sexuality, Games, and Play” (December 2018), co-edited with Amanda Phillips
Camera Obscura, “Queerness and Games” issue of “In Practice” section (fall 2017), co-edited with Teddy Pozo and Christopher Goetz
First Person Scholar, “Dispatches from the 2014 Queerness and Games Conference,” (February – March, 2015)
JOURNAL ARTICLES (peer-reviewed)
Ruberg, B. “Computer Dating in the Classifieds: Complicating the Cultural History of Matchmaking by Machine.” Information and Culture (2022).
Ruberg, B. “Playing with ‘Real Women’: A Sexual Prehistory of Realism in Video Games.” ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories (2022).
Ruberg, B. “Live Play, Live Sex: The Parallel Labors of Video Game Live Streaming and Webcam Modeling.” Sexualities (2022).
Ruberg, B. “Hungry Holes and Insatiable Balls: Video Games, Queer Mechanics, and the Limits of Design.” Journal of Cinema and Media Studies (2022)
Ruberg, B. “After Agency: The Queer Posthumanism of Video Games That Cannot Be Played.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies (2022).
Ruberg, Bo. “The Mystery of the Missing AIDS Crisis: A Comparative Reading of Caper in the Castro and Murder on Main Street.” American Literature (2022).
Ruberg, B. and Scully-Blaker, R. “Making Players Care: The Ambivalent Cultural Politics of Care and Video Games.” International Journal of Cultural Studies (2021).
Ruberg, B. and Lark, D. “Live Streaming from the Bedroom: Performing Intimacy through Domestic Space on Twitch.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies (2020).
Brewster, K. and Ruberg, B. “SURVIVORS: Archiving the History of Bulletin Board Systems and the HIV/AIDS Crisis.” First Monday (2020).
Ruberg, B. and Ruelos, S. “Data for Queer Lives: How LGBTQ Gender and Sexual Identities Challenge Norms of Demographics.” Big Data & Society (2020).
Ruberg, B. “Obscene, Pornographic, or Otherwise Objectionable: Biased Definitions of Sexual Content in Video Games Live Streaming.” New Media & Society (2020).
Ruberg, B. “Empathy and Its Alternatives: Deconstructing the Rhetoric of ‘Empathy’ in Video Games.” Communication, Culture & Critique (2020).
Nguyen, J., Ruberg, B. “Challenges of Designing Consent: Consent Mechanics in Video Games as Models for Interactive User Agency.” Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI).
Ruberg, B., Cullen, A., Brewster, K. “Nothing but a ‘Titty Streamer’: Legitimacy, Labor, and the Debate over Women’s Breasts in Video Game Live Streaming.” Critical Studies in Media Communication (2019).
Ruberg, B. “The Precarious Labor of Queer Indie Game Making: Who Benefits from Making Video Games ‘Better’?” Television & New Media (2019).
Ruberg, B. “Straight Paths through Queer Walking Simulators: Wandering on Rails and Speedrunning in Gone Home.” Games and Culture (2019).
Cullen, A., Ruberg, B. “Necklines and ‘Naughty Bits’: Constructing and Regulating Bodies in Live Streaming Community Guidelines.” Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (2019).
Ruberg, B. “Queer Indie Game Making as an Alternative Digital Humanities.” American Quarterly 70, no. 3 (2018).
Ruberg, B. “Straight-Washing Undertale: Video Games and the Limits of LGBTQ Representation.” Transformative Works and Cultures 28 (2018).
Ruberg, B. “Representing Sex Workers in Video Games: Feminisms, Fantasies of Exceptionalism, and the Value of Erotic Labor.” Feminist Media Studies 19, no. 3 (2019), online-first publication July 2018.
Ruberg, B. “What Is Your Mother’s Maiden Name? A Feminist History of Online Security Questions.” Feminist Media Histories (2017).
Ruberg, B. “Doing It for Free: Digital Labor and the Fantasy of Amateur Online Pornography.” Porn Studies (2016).
Ruberg, B. “Curating with a Click: The Art that Participatory Media Leaves Behind.” Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology (2015).
Ruberg, B. “Sex as Game: Playing with the Erotic Body in Virtual Worlds.” Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge (2010).
JOURNAL ARTICLES (editor-reviewed)
Ruberg, B., Phillips, A. “Not Gay as in Happy: Queer Resistance and Video Games.” Editors’ introduction to “Queerness and Video Games” special issue. Game Studies (2018).
Ruberg, B. “Queerness and Video Games: Queer Game Studies and New Perspectives through Play.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies (2018).
Ruberg, B. “Permalife: Video Games, Biopolitics, and the Queerness of Living.” Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds (2017).
Pozo, D., Ruberg, B., Goetz, C. “In Practice: Queerness and Games.” Camera Obscura (2017).
Ruberg, B. “Creating an Archive of LGBTQ Video-Game Content: An Interview with Adrienne Shaw.” Camera Obscura (2017).
Ruberg, B. “No Fun: The Queer Potential of Video Games that Annoy, Anger, Disappoint, Sadden, and Hurt.” QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking (2015).
Ruberg, B. “Video Games, Queerness, and Beyond.” Editor’s introduction to “Dispatches from the 2014 Queerness and Games Conference” special issue. First Person Scholar (2014).
BOOK CHAPTERS
Ruberg, B. “Queer Indie Game-Making: An Interview with Mo Cohen.” In Indie Games in the Digital Age, edited by Cynthia Wang and Michael J. Clarke. Bloomsbury Press (2020).
Ruberg, B. “#nohomo: Homophobic Twitter Hashtags, Straight Masculinity, and Networks of Disavowal.” In #Identity: Hashtagging Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Nation, edited by Abigail De Kosnik and Keith Feldman. University of Michigan Press (2019).
Ruberg, B. “Community: The Queerness and Games Conference.” In How to Play Video Games, edited by Nina Huntemann and Matthew Payne. New York University Press (2019).
Ruberg, B., Boyd, J., Howe, J. “Toward a Queer Digital Humanities.” In Bodies of Information: Intersectional Feminism and Digital Humanities, edited by Elizabeth Losh and Jacqueline Wernimont. University of Minnesota Press (2018).
Ruberg, B. “Playing to Lose: The Queer Art of Failing at Video Games.” In Gaming Representation: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Video Games, edited by Jennifer Malkowski and TreaAndrea Russworm. Indiana University Press (2017).
Shaw, A., Ruberg, B. “Imagining Queer Game Studies.” In Queer Game Studies, edited by Bonnie Ruberg and Adrienne Shaw: ix-xxxiii. University of Minnesota Press (2017).
Ruberg, B. “48-Hour Utopia: On Hope and the Future of Queerness in Games.” In Queer Game Studies, edited by Bonnie Ruberg and Adrienne Shaw. University of Minnesota (2017).
Ruberg, B. “The Arts of Failure: Jack Halberstam in Conversation with Jesper Juul.” In Queer Game Studies, edited by Bonnie Ruberg and Adrienne Shaw. University of Minnesota Press (2017).
BIBLIOGRAPHIES (peer-reviewed)
Shaw, A., Agloro, A., Nguyen, J., Phillips, A., Ruberg, B. “Oxford Bibliographies in Communication: Feminist and Queer Game Studies.” Oxford University Press. Online resource. Introduction to the field and annotated bibliography with 121 entries. (2019)
JOURNALISM
Journalistic reporting, columns, and reviews (selection)
From 2005 to 2009, Bonnie worked as professional journalist focusing on technology, video games, and culture, with a focus on sex and gender in digital spaces. She published regularly in popular, non-academic publications like The Village Voice, The Economist, and Forbes.
