Ryan Banfi
Affiliated Faculty, School of Film, Television, and Media Arts
Dr. Ryan Banfi is a media studies scholar who examines how play shapes how we read, watch, and engage with comics, film, television, video games, and literature. His first book, forthcoming with the University Press of Mississippi, focuses on cartoonist Chris Ware.
His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Critical Inquiry, JCMS, Games and Culture, Game Studies, Design Issues, South Central Review, and numerous other venues. A Hispanic Scholarship Fund Scholar, Dr. Banfi serves on the editorial board of Games and Culture. He teaches at MassArt and Emerson College.
Courses
- Seminar in Media Arts Topics
- Approaches in Media Studies
Academic Work
- Forthcoming, 2026, “The Last in The Last of Us,” Afterimage. Editor and author of introduction
- 2025, “Teaching Game Studies,” Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Teaching Media. Editor and author of introduction.
- 2026, “Feminist Pinball: How Women Are Changing Competitive Play and the Industry,” American Journal of Play (Winner of the 2025 Video Game Studies Emerging Scholar Writing Award, Society for Cinema and Media Studies).
- 2025, “Chris Ware’s New Yorker Covers and American School Shootings,” ImageTexT
- 2025, “Skateboards and Motorbikes: Supreme’s Adoption of Akira,” Journal of Anime and Manga Studies
- 2025, “After the Arcade: Pinball’s Afterimage in the New Millennium,” Afterimage
- 2025, “McDesign: McDonald’s Video Games and Digital Play Areas,” Design Issues (pp. 4-15)
- 2025, “Guilty of Being a Dwarf: Peter Dinklage and American Fantasy Television,” New Review of Film and Television Studies (pp. 1-38)
- 2025, “Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem as Metacommentary: Direct Address in Video Games,” Jump Cut
- 2025, “Establishing a Game Lab,” in Teaching Game Studies Dossier, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies