Michael Gamer

Michael Gamer serves as Associate Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and Italian at the University of Pennsylvania, where he holds interdisciplinary appointments across three humanities departments. His academic profile is defined by a focus on digital media's transformative impact on literary traditions.

His research critically examines how video game adaptations like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (iPhone, 2010) and Dante's Inferno (xBox, 2010) disrupt conventional adaptation theory, which typically assumes hierarchical relationships between source texts and derivatives. Gamer argues that gaming introduces a new mode of spectatorship through active player engagement, fundamentally challenging the notion of fixed 'original' texts. This work situates him at the intersection of literary studies, media theory, and digital humanities.

Scientific recognition includes:

• Andrew W. Mellon Penn Faculty Fellow in the Humanities (2011-2012)