Faculty and Staff

Anastasia Salter

• Professor
  Director of Graduate Programs, College of Arts and Humanities
• Email: [email protected]
• Office Hours: Wednesday 10 - 11:30 AM
• Campus Location: TCH236B
• View personal website

Biography

Anastasia Salter is a Professor of English at the University of Central Florida, and the Director of Graduate Programs and the PhD in Texts & Technology for the College of Arts and Humanities. Dr. Salter is the author of A Portrait of the Auteur as Fanboy (University of Mississippi Press, with Mel Stanfill, October 2020), Adventure Games: Playing the Outsider (Bloomsbury, with Aaron Reed and John Murray, 2020), Toxic Geek Masculinity in Media (Palgrave Macmillan 2017, coauthored with Bridget Blodgett), Jane Jensen: Gabriel Knight, Adventure Games, Hidden Objects (Bloomsbury 2017), What is Your Quest? From Adventure Games to Interactive Books (University of Iowa Press, 2014), and Flash: Building the Interactive Web (MIT Press, 2014, coauthored with John Murray).

Recent collaborations include chairing the Electronic Literature Organization Conference and Media Arts Festival virtually in 2020; serving on the editorial team of the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 3 (2016), a curated international collection of electronic literature; and co-editing the “Comics as Scholarship” experimental issue for Digital Humanities Quarterly (2015). Dr. Salter’s work has appeared in the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, The Journal of Popular Culture, Electronic Book Review, Porn Studies, Transformative Works and Cultures, and several other venues, and Dr. Salter is currently a member of the board of directors of the Electronic Literature Organization and the HASTAC Steering Committee, and previously served on the board and as president of the North American Simulation and Gaming Association.

Research Interests

• electronic literature
• adventure games
• platform studies
• digital humanities
• children's literature
• comic books
• media studies
• digital culture
• geek identity

Selected Publications

Books

• Forthcoming

  Johnson, Emily, and Anastasia Salter. Critical Making in the Age of AI. Amherst College Press (In Production, April 2025).

• Johnson, Emily, and Anastasia Salter. Playful Pedagogy in the Pandemic: Pivoting to Games-Based Learning. Routledge, 2022. 

• Salter, A; Moulthrop, S. (2021). Twining: Critical and Creative Approaches to Hypertext Narratives. Amherst College Press. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12255695. (Open Access; Peer reviewed)

• Salter, A. Stanfill, M. (October 2020). A Portrait of the Auteur as Fanboy: Gendered Authorship in Transmedia Franchises. University of Mississippi Press.

• Reed, A; Murray, J; Salter, A. (February 2020). Adventure Games: Playing the Outsider. Bloomsbury Press: New York. 
• Salter, A., & Blodgett, B. (2017). Toxic Geek Masculinity in Media: Sexism, Trolling, and Identity Policing. Palgrave Macmillan.

• Salter, A. (2017). Jane Jensen: Gabriel Knight, Adventure Games, Hidden Objects. Bloomsbury Academic Press.

• Salter, A. (November 2014). What is Your Quest? From Adventure Games to Interactive Books. University of Iowa Press. 

• Salter, A. and Murray, J. (September 2014). Flash: Building the Interactive Web. Platform Studies Series, MIT Press.

Edited Collections

• Mauer, Barry and Anastasia Salter, eds. Re-imagining the Humanities. Parlor Press, 2023.

• Boluk, S.; Flores, L.; Garbe, J.; Salter, A. (2016). The Electronic Literature Collection Volume 3. The Electronic Literature Organization. (Collection features over 100 works of electronic literature from around the world, editors listed alphabetically.)

Articles/Essays

• Moreshead, Abigail, and Anastasia Salter. “Stand With the Banned: Credibility Bias and the Fetishization of the ‘Classic’ Banned Books on Etsy”. First Monday, vol. 28, no. 12, Dec. 2023, doi:10.5210/fm.v28i12.13284.

• Murray, John, Jack Murray, and Anastasia Salter. “Playing with AI Chat: Positioning ‘Dangerous’ Language Model Futures through Interactive Fiction.” SIGDOC '23: Proceedings of the 41st ACM International Conference on Design of Communication. October 26, 2023. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3615335.3623015.

• Moreshead, Abigail, and Anastasia Salter. “Knitting the In_visible: Data-Driven Craftivism as Feminist Resistance.” Journal of Gender Studies, 2023, pp. 1–12. Taylor and  Francis, https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2023.2258068.

• Sullivan, Anne, Mel Stanfill, and Anastasia Salter. “The Constraints of Cozy Games: Boyfriend Dungeon and Consent in Queer Play.” The 18th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. 2023. https://doi.org/10.1145/3582437.3582452.

• Berge, PS,*Daniel Cox, Jack Murray, and Anastasia Salter. “Adventures in TwineSpace: An Augmented Reality Story Format for Twine.” International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling. Springer, Cham, 2022.

• Johnson, Emily K., and Anastasia Salter. “Embracing Discord? The rhetorical consequences of gaming platforms as classrooms.” Computers and Composition 65 (2022): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2022.102729.

• Moreshead, Abigail, and Anastasia Salter. “Craftivism in the Time of COVID: Resisting Toxic Masculinity through Feminized Labor.” Feminist Media Studies (2022): DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2022.2098797.

• Rouse, L., & Salter, A. (2021). "Cosplay on Demand? Instagram, OnlyFans, and the Gendered Fantrepreneur." Social Media + Society 7.3. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051211042397
• Salter, A. and M. Stanfill. (2021). “Pivot! Thoughts on Virtual Conferencing and ELOrlando 2020”, Electronic Book Review. http://electronicbookreview.com/essay/pivot-thoughts-on-virtual-conferencing-and-elorlando-2020/.
• Winter, R., Salter, A., & Stanfill, M. (2021). Communities of making: Exploring parallels between fandom and open source. First Monday, 26(2). Retrieved from https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/10870
• Salter, A. (2020). “#NostalgiaGate? Comics as Battleground in Transmedia Networked Publics.” In ImageText: Interdisciplinary Comic Studies special forum ImageTech: Comics and Materiality. Vol 11.3. 
• Salter, A. (2020) "Plundered Hearts: Infocom, Romance, and the History of Feminist Game Design." Feminist Media Histories, Vol 6:1, Winter 2020: 66-92. <https://fmh.ucpress.edu/content/6/1/66>.
• Salter, A. (2019). "#RelationshipGoals? Suicide Squad and Fandom’s Love of 'Problematic' Men." Television & New Media. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476419879916
• Winter, R. and Salter, A. (2019). "DeepFakes: Uncovering hardcore open source on GitHub." Porn Studies Journal. <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23268743.2019.1642794> 
• Salter, A.; Whitson, R.; Helms, J. (2018). “Making comics as scholarship: A reflection on the process behind DHQ 9.4.” Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy 23(1).  
• Blodgett, B.; Salter, A. (2018). “Ghostbusters is For Boys: Understanding Geek Masculinity’s Role in the Alt-right.” Communication Culture & Critique, 11(1), 133-146. 
• Salter, A.(2017). "Taking Over the World, Again? Examining Procedural Remakes of Adventure Games." Well Played Volume 6. No. 3. <http://press.etc.cmu.edu/index.php/product/well-played-vol-6-no-3/>
• Salter, A. (2017). “Code before Content? Brogrammer Culture in Games and Electronic Literature.” Hyperhiz: New Media Cultures 17. <http://hyperrhiz.io/hyperrhiz17/>.
• Watson, K. and Salter, A. (2016). "Playing Art Historian: Teaching 20th Century Art through Alternate Reality Gaming." International Journal for the Scholarship of Technology Enhanced Learning 1.1. 
• Salter, A. (2015). "Alice in Dataland 2.0." Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, 20(1).
• Salter, A. (2015). "Learning through Making: Notes on Teaching Interactive Narrative." Syllabus Journal, 4.1.

Book Sections/Chapters

• Forthcoming

  Salter, Anastasia. “Tame, Suggestive, and Lewd: Early Erotic Play Encoded in Leather Goddesses of Phobos.” The Bloomsbury Handbook of Sex and Sexuality in Game Studies, edited by Matthew Wysocki and Steffi Shook. Bloomsbury, forthcoming January 2025.

• Salter, Anastasia, and Mel Stanfill. “Game Studies: Endgame?” Debates in the Digital Humanities 2023, edited by Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein. University of Minnesota Press, 2023.

• Blodgett, Bridget and Anastasia Salter. “’Get your hero on, dude!’ Charting Jake’s Growth as a Positive Masculine Role Model.” Analyzing Adventure Time, edited by Paul A. Thomas. McFarland Press, 71-83.

• Salter, Anastasia. “Afterword: Confessions of a Game Scholar in an English Department.” Teaching Games and Game Studies in the Literature Classroom, edited by Tison Pugh and Lynn Ramey. Bloomsbury Press, 2022. 
• Moreshead, Abigail, and Anastasia Salter. “Digital Humanities and/as Media Studies.” The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Digital Humanities, edited by James O’Sullivan. Bloomsbury Press, 2022. 
• Stanfill, Mel, and Anastasia Salter. “Avatar Bodies that Matter: The Work of ‘Realism’ in Gendered Representation.” EA Sports FIFA: Feeling the Game, edited by Raiford Guins, Henry Lowood, and Carlin Wing. Bloomsbury Press, 2022.
• Salter, Anastasia, and Mark Kretzschmar. “Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall.” Fifty Key Video Games, edited by Bernard Perron, Kelly Boudreau, Mark JP Wolf and Dominic Arsenault. Routledge Press.

• Salter, A. (2021). “Theory & Practice of Interactive Storytelling (DIG 6551).” In Ferdig, R.E., Baumgartner, E., & Gandolfi, E. (Eds.) Teaching the Game: A collection of syllabi for game design, development, and implementation (Vols. 1-2).  (pp. 370-384). Pittsburgh, PA: ETC Press.

• Salter, Anastasia. "Maker Generation? The Uncertain Future of Students as Interactive Storytellers." The Community and the Algorithm: A Digital Interactive Poetics, edited by Andrew Klobucar. Vernon Press, 2021, pp. 73-86.

• Salter, A.; Blodgett, B. (2021). "Training Designer Two: Ideological Conflicts in Feminist Games + Digital Humanities." In D. Kim & A. Koh (Eds), Alternative Histories of the Digital Humanities (pp. 271-296). Punctum Books.
• Salter, A.; Blodgett, B. (2021). Fanfiction, Transformative Works, and Feminist Resistance in Digital Culture. In J. Lutes & J. Travis (Eds.), Gender in American Literature and Culture, Cambridge Themes in American Literature and Culture (pp. 271–285). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
• Salter, A.; Murray, J. (2021). “E-Lit after Flash: The Rise (and Fall) of a ‘Universal’ Language.” Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities. Edited by Dene Grigar and James O’Sullivan. Bloomsbury Press. 

• Salter, A. (2020). “Virtual Farmer, Real Activist? Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang’s In Real Life.” EcoComix: Essays on the Environment in Comics and Graphic Novels. Edited by Sidney Dobrin. McFarland Press.

• Salter, A. (2020). "Gendered Authorship in War Gaming: Whose Fantasy is it Anyways?" Feminist War Games?: Mechanisms of War, Feminist Values, and Interventional Games. Edited by Saklofske, J., Arbuckle, A., & Bath, J. (Eds.). Routledge.
• Blodgett, B.; Salter, A. (2019). “What Was Missing: Children’s Queerbaiting and Homoromantic Exclusion in Adventure Time and Steven Universe.” Queerbaiting and Fandom: Teasing Fandom Fans Through Homoerotic Possibilities. Edited by Joseph Brennan. The University of Iowa Press.
• Salter, A. (2019). “Collaborative Voices: Kate Pullinger’s Digital Authorial Voice.” The Digital Imaginary. Edited by Roderick Coover. Bloomsbury Press.
• Salter, A. (2019). “Dead Girl with the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo: Supernatural and the Disposable Other.” Death in Supernatural: Critical Essays. Edited by Amanda Taylor and Susan Nylander. McFarland Press. (Peer reviewed)
• Salter, A. (2019). “King’s Quest: Narrative” Invited chapter for How to Play Video Games. Edited by Matt Payne and Nina Huntemann, under contract with New York University Press. Page 29-35.
• Forthcoming Salter, A. and Blodgett B. (2019). “Playing the Humanities: Feminist Game Studies and Public Discourse.” Bodies of Information: Intersectional Feminism and Digital Humanities. Edited by Elizabeth Losh and Jacqueline Wernimont. University of Minnesota Press. 
• Blodgett, B. and Salter, A. (2018). “The Doctors Who Waited: The Lonely Woman Scientist Trope in Geek TV.” Women in STEM on Television. Edited by Ashley Carlson. McFarland Press.
• Salter, A. (2018). “Building Interactive Stories.” In The Routledge Companion to Media Studies and Digital Humanities. Edited by Jentery Sayers. Routledge Press. 
• Salter, A. (2016). “Comics and Art.” In The Routledge Companion to Comics. Edited by Frank Bramlett, Roy Cook, and Aaron Meskin. Routledge Press, June.
• Salter, A. (2016). “Educational Games.” In Debugging Game History: A Critical Lexicon.  Edited by Raiford Guins and Henry Lowood. MIT Press.

• Salter, A. (2014). “Writing Under Constraint” and “Mobile Entertainment.” In The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Humanities. Co-editors: Lori Emerson, Marie-Laure Ryan, Benjamin Robertson. Johns Hopkins University Press.

• Salter, A. (2013). “Hacking the Dissertation.” In Hacking the Academy, edited by D. Cohen and T. Scheinfeldt. University of Michigan Press.

• Salter, A. (2011). “Closed Minds: Tamora Pierce’s Teenagers and the Problem of Desire.” Supernatural Youth. Ed. J. Battis. Lexington Press.

Creative Publications

• Salter, A. (2019). "Being Mii." Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures 21. Special Issue: Buzzademia: Scholarship in the Internet Vernacular. Ed. A. Cong-Huyen; K. Knight; M. Marino. <http://hyperrhiz.io/hyperrhiz21/>.
• Salter, A.; Murray, J. (2019) "Blocked In." Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures 21. Special Issue: Buzzademia: Scholarship in the Internet Vernacular. Ed. A. Cong-Huyen; K. Knight; M. Marino. <http://hyperrhiz.io/hyperrhiz21/>.
• Burelle, M.; Kocurek, C.; Perez, A.; Reilly, M.; Salter, A.; Smith, G.; Vadakumchery, T. (2018). “The Spider’s Web: Alternate Reality Game” Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, Issue 13. (Peer-reviewed). <https://adanewmedia.org/2018/05/issue13-kuchera/>
• Salter, A.; Blodgett, B. (2017). “Alt-Right: Ctrl+A; Del.” Journal of Persona Studies 3.1. (Peer Reviewed) < https://ojs.deakin.edu.au/index.php/ps/article/view/656> 

Conference Papers/Presentations

• Stanfill, Mel, Anastasia Salter, and Anne Sullivan. “They Can't Play with Us: Pronoun Controversies and the Reinforcement of Heteronormativity in Games.” FDG 2024: Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. July 5, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1145/3649921.3650018.

• Stanfill, Mel, Anastasia Salter, and Anne Sullivan. “Orange is Sus: Among Us and Political Play.” The 16th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG) 2021. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1145/3472538.3472562.

• Kretzschmar, M.; Salter, A. (2020). “Party Ghosts and Queer Teen Wolves: Monster Prom and Resisting Heteronormativity in Dating Simulators.” In Proceedings of the 15th Conference on the Foundation of Digital Games. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3402942.3402975. 
• Sullivan, A.; Stanfill, M.; Salter, A. (2020). “Crafting is So Hardcore: Masculinized Making in Gaming Representations of Labor.” In Proceedings of the 15th Conference on the Foundation of Digital Games. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3402942.3402976. 
• Eddy, R.; Baker, C.; Macy, R.; Murray, J.; Salter, A. (2020). “Hacking Droids and Casting Spells: Locative Augmented Reality Games and the Reimagining of the Theme Park.” In HT ’20: Proceedings of the 31st ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media, July 13-15, 2020, Virtual Event, USA. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3372923.3404801. 
• Salter, A.; Stanfill, M.; Sullivan, A. (2019). “But Does Pikachu Love You? Reproductive Labor in Casual and Hardcore Games.” In Proceedings of the 14th Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. ACM. https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:26305/
• Salter, A.; Blodgett, B. (2018). “‘Every Word You Just Said is Wrong’: Online Rage and Inclusivity in Disney Franchise Fandom.” In Selected Papers of Internet Research 17. Association of Internet Research. 
• Salter, A.; Blodgett, B.; Sullivan, A. (2018). “‘Just Because It’s Gay’: Transgressive Design in Queer Coming of Age Visual Novels.” In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. ACM. <https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3235765> 
• Sullivan, A; Salter, A.; Smith, G. (2018). “Games Crafters Play.” In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. ACM. (Peer reviewed) <https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3235765>
• Salter, A.; Blodgett, B. (2017). “This is Fine: #ResistJam and the 2016 Election in Gaming.” In Foundations of Games 2017, Hyannis, MA, August 14-17. ACM.
• Sullivan, A.; Salter, A. (2017). “Towards a Narrative Taxonomy of Physical Games.” In Foundations of Games 2017, Hyannis, MA, August 14-17. ACM.
• Salter, A. (2016) "Playing at empathy: Representing and experiencing emotional growth through Twine games." Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Serious Games and Applications for Health (SeGAH), Orlando, Florida. 
• Kourova, A., Salter, A., Pidberejna, I., & McDaniel, R. (2016). “From Orlando to Russia: Cross-cultural communication through gamemaking.” In Proceedings of the 34th Annual International Conference on the Design of Communication. New York: Association for Computing Machinery. Arlington, Virginia.
• Watson, K. and Salter, A. (2016). "Secret Societies of the Avant-garde: Designing a Game for Art History." Games Learning Society 11 Proceedings, ETC Press, 440-443.

Awards

Reed, A.; Murray, J.; Salter, A. (2020). Honorable Mention for the N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature for Adventure Games: Playing the Outsider, Electronic Literature Organization.

Salter, A. (2020) UCF Research Incentive Award Recipient.

Salter, A.; Stanfill, M. (2019) Board of Trustees Faculty Recognition.

Salter, A.; Stanfill, M.; Sullivan, A. (2019). Best Paper Award, Foundations of Digital Games for “But Does Pikachu Love You? Reproductive Labor in Casual and Hardcore Games.”

Salter, A. (2019). UCF Women’s History Month honoree, University of Central Florida.

Salter, A. (2017). UCF Luminary Award. University of Central Florida.

Salter, A.; Blodgett, B. (2017). Honorable Mention Paper Award, Foundation of Digital Games for “This is Fine: #ResistJam and the 2016 Election in Gaming.”

Salter, A. (2017). Shortlisted for the N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature for “Alice in Dataland.” Electronic Literature Organization.

Whitson, R.; Salter, A.; et al. (2016).Comics as Scholarship special issue of Digital Humanities Quarterly: Best Online Comic Studies Scholarship award, administered by A. David Lewis, Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo.

Salter, A. (2016). Featured paper, Electronic Literature Organization Conference. One of two juried selected papers.

Salter, A. (2015). Research Fellowship, Strong National Museum of Play. “Life and work of video game designer Jane Jensen.” July.

Blodgett, B.; Salter, A.(2014). Exemplary Paper Award, Foundations of Digital Games for “#1ReasonWhy: Game Communities and the Invisible Woman.”

Salter, A. (2012). Rising Star Award for best presentation by early career / newcomer for “Building a Better Reality, Together: Alternate Reality Games as Shared Worlds.” North American Simulation and Gaming Association Conference, Columbus, OH, November 7-10.

Activities

2020. Track Chair. Interactive Narrative Theory Track, International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling 2020, Bournemouth, UK.

2019 to 2020. Co-Chair. ACM Hypertext and Social Media Conference 2020, Orlando, FL. (Moved online due to COVID-19).

2019 to 2020. Co-Chair. NEH Understanding Digital Culture Institute 2020, Orlando, FL. (Moved online due to COVID-19).

2019 to 2022. Co-Chair. Console-ing Passions Conference 2022, Orlando, FL. (Postponed due to COVID-19).

2019 to 2020. Chair. Electronic Literature Organization Conference and Media Arts Festival, Orlando, FL. (Moved online due to COVID-19).

2018 to present. Steering Committee. HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory).

2018 to present. Education Committee, Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation.

2016 to present. Board of Directors, Electronic Literature Organization. Treasurer, 2018 to present.

2016 to 2019. Committee, Modern Language Association Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession. Co-Chair, 2017 to 2019.

2016 to 2017. Chair Coordinator and Artistic Committee, Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2017.

2015 to 2016. Co-Program Chair. IEEE International Conference on Serious Games and Applications for Health (SeGAH).

2014 to 2015. Board Member, North American Simulation and Gaming Association.

2014 to 2018. THATCamp Coordinating Council, elected member.

2014. Conference Chair, THATCamp Games: NASAGA Edition unconference.

2013 to 2014. Chair of the Board and Conference Chair, North American Simulation and Gaming Association.

2012 to 2013. Board, North American Simulation and Gaming Association.

2012. Co-Chair (w/ A. Visconti), THATCamp Games unconference

Courses

• Spring 2026
• Fall 2025
• Summer 2025
• Spring 2025
• Fall 2024
• Summer 2024
• Spring 2024
• Fall 2023
• Summer 2023