Area of Research / Interest:  Psychoanalysis, Globalization, New Media Studies, Labor Studies, Platform Studies (Discord and Reddit), Streamer Studies, Human-Computer Interaction (mainly Game User Research), Computational Linguistics, Science Fiction Studies, and Creative Writing (for fiction and poetry)

Undergraduate Education Institution: Johns Hopkins University

Undergraduate Major: English

Biography: Jayden holds a BA in English and a minor in Writing Seminars. His current research is on archiving secondary sources around comic books and digital media such as video games through acknowledging journals, newspapers; YouTuber reviews or analyses; and modding and fanfiction. Additionally, he is working on projects centered around the development of video games within workplaces in the US and Japan; and looking to the field of analog game studies to study TTJRPG’s and miniature war games such as Warhammer 40k for the creation of publics, imaginaries, and competitiveness.

Central to his projects are theories of political-economy and desire, such as exploring critiques of technological determinism, the labor theory of value, social reproduction, the Big Other, Lacan’s registers for cognition, and notions of becoming according to Deleuze and Guattari.

In the future, he hopes to explore VR studies, and understand how AI contributes to the development of games and understandings of consciousness; in fields of esoteric studies (Alchemy and Hermeneutics) chronicle the development of models for social infrastructure, being, and collective unconsciousness; and for Streamer and Platform studies explore methods for localized forms of journalism that can accommodate or mediate preexisting functions of streamers and platforms such as Twitter.

When Jayden is not working on his projects he is studying World Literature, or Middle and Early English poetry and plays (Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, and Spencer); exploring comic books, manga, anime, horror tv shows and films; writing fiction, poetry, or learning how to write for film and video games; and working with livestreamer communities by contributing to conducive dialogs or drama on the next big piece of news.

Feel free to catch him on campus at RPI’s Magic The Gathering Club, Warhammer 40k Club, Rensselaer Philosophical Society, RPI Game Dev Club, or Comma: RPI’s Creative Writing Club. Email:  montaj3@rpi.edu