Project Description

The Transverse Reading Project conducts research in narrative media structures, with forms including video game plots, comic page layouts, poetic rhyme schemes and more. Currently two initiatives are underway -- mapping an archive of gamebooks (playable print stories) and diagramming the page layouts of a large collection of comics (including graphic novels, manga, webcomics & webtoons).

Undergraduate Contribution

Researchers will receive training and participate in collection, cataloging, encoding, visualization and analysis of narrative media. For gamebooks this involves archival research at UCSB Library Special Collections, encoding game narratives. For comics, this involves collecting and organizing image repositories, and encoding layouts. Both involve generating visualizations and writing up analyses of research results.

Requirements/Application Instructions

Reliable and eager to learn. Archival research requires being detail-oriented and organized. No technical skills are required, but researchers should be open to working with software and learning new things. Interests in literature, games, and interactive media are an asset.