Colin Milburn

Ph.D./Ph.D., Harvard University
M.A., Stanford University
B.S., Stanford University
B.A., Stanford University

Colin Milburn's research focuses on the relations of literature, science, and technology. His interests include science fiction, gothic horror, the history of biology, the history of physics, nanotechnology, video games, and the digital humanities. He is a professor in the English Department, the Science and Technology Studies Department, and the Cinema and Digital Media Department. He is also affiliated with the programs in Cultural Studies, Performance Studies, and Critical Theory. He is the chair of the Science and Technology Studies Department, the director of the ModLab digital humanities laboratory, and the director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Experimental Futures.

Books:

Edited Books:

Selected Articles and Book Chapters:

• “Mutate or Die: Neo-Lamarckian Ecogames and Responsible Evolution,” in Ecogames: Playful Perspectives on the Climate Crisis, eds. Laura op de Beke, Joost Raessens, Stefan Werning, and Gerald Farca (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024).
• “Wrapped in Story: The Affordances of Narrative for Citizen Science Games,” co-authored with Josh Aaron Miller, Katherine Buse, Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal, Seth Cooper, and Justin Siegel, in Foundations of Digital Games 2023 (New York: Association for Computing Machinery, 2023).
• “Join the Fold: Video Games, Science Fiction, and the Refolding of Citizen Science,” co-authored with Katherine Buse, Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal, Melissa Wills, Raida Aldosari, Patrick Camarador, Josh Aaron Miller, and Justin Siegel, Design Issues 39 (2023): 70–87.
• “In the Loop: Reordering Human–Technology Relations,” in Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of the Imagination, eds. Glyn Morgan and Charlotte Grievson (London: Hudson and Thames, 2022).
• “Quantum Technologies and Society: Towards a New Spin,” co-authored with Christopher Coenen, Alexei Grinbaum, Armin Grunwald, and Pieter Vermaas, NanoEthics 16 (2022): 1–6.
• "Citizens of the Future: Science Fiction and the Games of Citizen Science," co-authored with Melissa Wills, Science Fiction Film and Television 14 (2021): 115-44.
• “This World Which Is Not One: Superhero Comics and Other Dimensions of Reference,” co-authored with Mark Jerng, in Practices of Speculation, eds. Jeanne Cortiel, Christine Hantke, Jan Hutte, and Colin Milburn (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2020), pp. 243-274.
• “The Future at Stake: Modes of Speculation in The Highest Frontier and Microbiology: An Evolving Science,” in Posthuman Biopolitics: The Science and Fiction of Joan Slonczewski, ed. Bruce Clarke (New York: Palgrave, 2020).
• “Red Dot Sight,” co-authored with Rita Raley, in The Routledge Companion to Media and Risk, eds. Bishnu Ghosh and Bhaskar Sarkar (New York: Routledge, 2020).
• “Cyberpunk Activism,” in The Routledge Companion to Cyberpunk Culture, eds. Anna McFarlane, Lars Schmeink, and Graham Murphy (London: Routledge, 2019), 373-381.
• “Ahead of Time: Gerald Feinberg and the Governance of Futurity,” Osiris 34 (2019): 216-237.
• “Long Live Play: The PlayStation Network and Technogenic Life,” in Research Objects in Their Technological Setting, eds. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Sacha Loeve, Alfred Nordmann, and Astrid Schwartz (Routledge, 2017), pp. 105-122.
• “‘Ain’t No Way Offa This Train’: Final Fantasy VII and the Pwning of Environmental Crisis,” in Sustainable Media, eds. Nicole Starosielski and Janet Walker (Routledge, 2016), pp. 77-92.
• “Green Gaming: Video Games and Environmental Risk,” in The Anticipation of Catastrophe: Environmental Risk in North American Literature and Culture, eds. Sylvia Mayer and Alexa Weik von Mossner (Universitätsverlag Winter Heidelberg, 2014), pp. 201-219.
• “Postmortem: The Necrosis of Nanotechnology,” in Evolution Haute Couture: Art and Science in the Postbiological Age, ed. Dmitry Bulatov (Moscow National Center for Contemporary Art, 2013), pp. 448-467.
• “Greener on the Other Side: Science Fiction and the Problem of Green Nanotechnology,” Configurations 20 (2012): 53-87.
• “Modifiable Futures: Science Fiction at the Bench,” Isis 101 (2010): 560-569.
• “Tactical Atomism,” in Art in the Age of Nanotechnology, eds. Vashti Innes-Brown, Chris Malcolm, and Pauline Williams (John Curtin Gallery, 2010), pp. 8-20.
• “Science from Hell: Jack the Ripper and Victorian Vivisection,” in Science Images and Popular Images of the Sciences, eds. Bernd Huppauf and Peter Weingart (Routledge, 2007), pp. 125-158.
• “Syphilis in Faerie Land: Edmund Spenser and the Syphilography of Elizabethan England,” Criticism 46 (2004): 396-632.
• “Monsters in Eden: Darwin and Derrida,” MLN 118 (2003): 603-621.
• “Nanotechnology in the Age of Posthuman Engineering: Science Fiction as Science,” Configurations 10 (2002): 262-295.
  • Republished in N. Katherine Hayles, ed., Nanoculture: Implications of the New Technoscience (Intellect Books, 2004), pp. 109-129.
  • Republished in The Cybercultures Reader, 2nd edition, eds. Barbara Kennedy and David Bell (Routledge, 2007), pp. 730-758.