CV

Adrienne Domasin’s research explores the intersections of cultural studies, game studies, and critical race theory, with a focus on media representation, transmedia storytelling, and the complex dynamics of identity within interactive narratives and post-apocalyptic media.

 

Domasin’s upcoming work, Playful Counterknowledges based on her dissertation project with Bloomsbury Press, represents a radical intervention into dominant ideological structures. By leveraging gameplay as a critical methodology, she refuses to acquiesce to reductive representational politics. Instead, Domasin uses play and fan practices as transformative technologies that suspend capitalist alienation, creating alternative epistemological spaces where marginalized subjectivities can reimagine and restructure power dynamics beyond traditional academic discourse.

 

Domasin’s edited collection, The Psychgeist of Popular Culture: The Last of Us, forthcoming from Play Story Press, is an edited collection that excavates the complex emotional terrains of femininity, trauma, grief, and ludic experience within the game’s narrative and storyworld. The collection critically examines how play becomes a mode of processing collective and individual traumatic experiences.

 

Domasin serves as The Last of Us Area Chair for the Southwest Popular and American Culture Conference, Domasin curates conference sessions, reviews proposals, and serves as a liaison between presenters and conference organizers. She has served as Graduate Student Representative for the Transmedia Storytelling Special Interest Group (SIG) and the African/African American Caucus within the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, representing graduate student perspectives and supporting caucus administrative functions.

 

Domasin’s current research on Twitch streaming cultures, “Playfully Perilous: Permadeath Streams of The Last of Us Part II as a Collective Playground,” is deeply informed by her own streaming practices and her role as a community moderator for a prominent TLoU permadeath streamer. By bridging researcher and practitioner perspectives, she generates nuanced insights into digital community formations and collaborative play experiences.