Douglas A. Guerra

Douglas A. Guerra is an Associate Professor of Literature and Technology at SUNY Oswego’s Department of English and Creative Writing. He directs the interdisciplinary American Studies Program and the English department, teaching courses in U.S. literature, media theory, popular culture, and the relationship between technological innovation and social structures.

• Ph.D., Loyola University Chicago, 2011
• B.A., University of Chicago, 2001

Guerra’s research sits at the intersection of literary study, material culture, and media phenomenology, focusing on the long nineteenth-century U.S. His work employs procedural analysis, performance studies, queer theory, and critical sociology to explore marginalized media forms like games, stock imagery, and ephemera, redefining literary genres to uncover social practices around reading and playing. Current projects investigate ephemera’s role in building “human infrastructures” for collective survival.

His scholarship has been supported by fellowships from The Strong Museum of Play, American Antiquarian Society, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Guerra co-founded the C19 Podcast and contributed to digital humanities projects like Romantic Circles, blending technical and scholarly expertise to innovate media annotation standards.

• Slantwise Moves: Games, Literature, and Social Invention in Nineteenth-Century America (2018, UPenn Press) – Ray and Pat Browne Award winner

Guerra’s digital pedagogy, including experiments with proceduralized media, has been highlighted in the C19 Society’s #TeachingC19 series. He emphasizes interdisciplinary collaboration, merging literary analysis with technological and sociological frameworks to challenge traditional genre boundaries.