The College Experience

I entered the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)  in 2007.  I came in as a Film and Media Studies major as I was determined from my performance school background that a life of entertainment was for me.  I dreamt of becoming the next greatest director, changing my name from Victoria Hungerford to simply Victoria Ford and then further to Tori Ford...needless to say within two quarters I began to realize perhaps Film Studies was not the choice for me.

Relentless, I stuck with it, adding a second major: Theater with a directing emphasis. I was a person who previously resisted change and liked to finish things through, until I realized that these majors were not making me happy.  Early on I had no understanding to the why it made me unhappy.  Instead of critically analyzing my own reasons to my emotions, I shoved them deep down and found that the party lifestyle of Isla Vista was very good at doing this.

Then one glorious quarter I took a Feminist studies class.  JUMPING CATFISH BATMAN! I had an intellectual revelation.  It felt almost spiritual as if my wave was beginning to open and accept the one consciousness.  I had found my Super String Theory in a sense.  While I exaggerate my initial reaction to the framework of thought that Feminist Studies was giving me it is not to say that it wasn't profound.  I finally was beginning to find that "college experience" that I was hoping for.

I stayed Feminist Studies and Film Studies for awhile.  I had practically stopped taking film classes and concentrated mostly on classes that made me think outside the hegemony I was brought up in, it gave a new perspective to the world and actions around me.  I began to critically engage in my environment instead of just be in my environment.

It wasn't until I took Professor Batiste's special topic class: 191SB, Black Performance, that I entered Black Studies.  It was Spring quarter of my sophomore year and I was interested in the class based on a flyer that was sent through the Film Studies mailing list.  It seemed interesting enough and I wanted to take 18 units, a normal quarter load for myself.

Let me take a minute and say that this class was really difficult.  It was so difficult that it forced me to want to do my best in it because I felt like I was being challenged, I was dealing with theories and modes of thought that I had never experienced before in my college career.  I spent hours reading the rather thick reader and various text books.  I was beginning to understand a way of thinking about society outside Gender and sexuality.

While Feminist studies does teach about the intersections of identity, it has an emphasis on studying solely gender and sexuality.  Finally, I was beginning to understand the intersection of race and class with gender and sexuality.  The theories presented in this class got me hooked.  From Fanon's the mask, the Du Bois double consciousness, to Elam's notion of performance to transcend both space and time, my mind was whirling in theoretical discussions with knowledgable students and I finally felt like I was actually learning, engaging in intellectual discussion with individuals my age, and having a blast doing it.

That summer I decided to become a Black Studies major.  Who I was kidding? Film depressed me, the class sizes were too big and I was bored.  (I think my grades really reflected this).

As a multi-racial first generation born American I felt that Black studies not only was giving me the critical tools to analyze my own positionality in the world (of course, Feminist studies allowed me to think critically about gender & my own sexuality), it also opened up my eyes to a history that was never told to me.  BUCKING HORSE BATMAN!  The truth! (or a version of it, thanks Foucault!)

My studies have led me to a certain area of focus: Video Games.  I'm interested in studying the relationship female gamer "grrls" have with an online console platform such as the Xbox Live Network. I did a research paper over two quarters through the Feminist studies that looked at the following issues:


I looked at how females negotiate their gender during and after markers of sexual harassment on the Xbox Live Network during the multiplayer function of both Halo 3 and Halo Reach, popular first person shooter games.

I want to understand the gender gap in First Person Shooter games (and other "hardcore" video games) and find ways to change the gender gap both online and behind the scenes developing.
However, I see this as only scratching the surface of my entire study. I need to add a level of both race and class and see how these two things also affect the ways in which self identified female gamers engage in the the online culture of XBLN, specifically through the channels of FPS.

I'm a big geek/dork and totally comfortable with my love for comics, anime and video games. I think my area of study pretty much shows that.


Black Studies courses I have taken are the following:  Black Studies Special Topic 191SB, 1, 38A, 102, 4, 136, 128, 142, 3, 169CR, 199