THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
BIOGRAPHY
Katherine Buse uses methods from science and technology studies, science fiction studies, and the environmental humanities to study how science shapes and is shaped by its cultural milieu. She is working on a book project, titled Speculative Planetology: Science, Culture, and the Building of Model Worlds. It describes planetary world building, or speculative planetology, as a set of shared practices built up between planetary and climate scientists, creators of speculative fiction, engineers, and policymakers since the middle of the 20th century.
Katherine also studies and designs video games, including being on the design team for Foldit: First Contact, a new narrative version of the citizen science video game Foldit. She received her Ph.D in English with an emphasis in Science and Technology Studies at the University of California, Davis in 2021. As a Marshall Scholar, she received an MA in Science Fiction Studies at the University of Liverpool and an MPhil in Criticism and Culture at Cambridge.
Selected Publications and Teaching
“An Ecology of Artificial Agents: Smallville, Westworld, and the Imaginaries of AI Development,” in preparation for Configurations special issue on AI Ecologies (2025).
“Science Fiction, Simulation, Code: Transmedia and Translation in the Foldit Narrative Project.” Chapter co-authored with Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal, Imagining Transmedia, eds. Ed Finn, Joey Eschrich, Ruth Wylie, and Bob Beard. MIT Press (2024).
“Wrapped in Story: The Affordances of Narrative for Citizen Science Games.” Co-authored with Josh Aaron Miller, Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal, Justin Siegel, Seth Cooper, and Colin Milburn. In Foundations of Digital Games 2023 (FDG 2023), April 12–14, 2023, Lisbon, Portugal. ACM, New York, NY, USA.
“Join the Fold: Video Games, Science Fiction, and the Refolding of Citizen Science.” Co-authored with Colin Milburn, Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal, Melissa Wills, Raida Aldosari, Patrick Camarador, Josh Aaron Miller, and Justin Siegel. Design Issues 2023; vol 39 no. 1, pp. 70–87, 2022.
“Genesis Effects: Growing Planets in 1980s Computer Graphics.” Configurations, vol. 29, no. 2,
2021.
“The Working Planetologist: Speculative Worlds and the Practice of Climate Science.” Practices of Speculation: Modeling, Embodiment, Figuration, eds. Jeanne Cortiel, Christine Hanke, Jan Hutta, and Colin Milburn. Transcript Verlag, 2020, pp. 51-76.
Autumn Quarter 2024
CMST 28910 Planetary Media
Winter Quarter 2025
CMST 40001 Methods and Issues in Media Studies
Spring Quarter 2025
CMST 67800 Technologies of Care