Samantha Blackmon is an Associate Professor at Purdue University. She focuses on rhetoric, digital media, and their intersections and serves on an interdisciplinary university gaming committee working on curriculum and research initiatives. She began her career teaching elementary school and figuring out how to make learning a game. She has published on race and gaming, race and technology, and technology and pedagogy. Her publications “Racing toward representation: An understanding of racial representation in video games” in Gaming lives in the twenty-first century: Literate connections (2007) and “(Cyber)Conspiracy theories?: African-American students in the computerized writing environment” in Labor, Writing Technologies, and the Shaping of Composition in the Academy (2007). She also writes about games and education online at Joystick101.org. Samantha spends her free time traveling to various places, including World of Warcraft’s Azeroth and Oblivion’s Tamriel, and trying to figure out how to drive while playing FFIII on her DS.