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Russell Sage Laboratory 5306
- gibbow3@rpi.edu
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518-276-6487
- 0000-0002-2987-0187
About
Dr. William Gibbons joined RPI as Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and Professor in 2024. A leading scholar of music and media, Gibbons’s wide-ranging research explores the intersections of the arts, humanities, and technology in contemporary culture, especially in video games.
In addition to dozens of books, articles, and chapters, Gibbons also co-edited the recent Oxford Handbook of Video Game Music and Sound (Oxford, 2024) as well as the essay collections Music in Video Games (Routledge, 2014) and Music in the Role-Playing Game (Routledge, 2020). His book Unlimited Replays: Video Games and Classical Music (Oxford, 2018) explores the relationship between games and the arts from the early arcade to the contemporary concert hall. A new co-edited volume with Brepols press, Global Histories of Video Game Music Technology (expected publication 2025), promises to break new ground by de-centering North America and highlighting previously unexplored game history, arts, and technology from many countries around the world. In high demand as a public speaker, Gibbons regularly delivers invited lectures, keynotes, and pre-concert talks at universities, conferences, and concert venues across the United States and Europe.
Prior to joining RPI, Gibbons served as Dean of The Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam, one of the oldest and largest schools of music in the Northeast. At Crane, Gibbons directed the creation and revision of innovative new curricula, developed partnerships with industry leaders, and successfully acted as lead fundraiser for the school.
Gibbons holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in musicology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as a B.A. in Music from Emory & Henry University.
Publications
Books
2024. Gibbons, William and Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard, Eds. The Oxford Handbook of Video Game Music and Sound. New York: Oxford University Press.
2020. Gibbons, William and Steven Reale, Eds. Music in the Role-Playing Game: Heroes & Harmonies. New York: Routledge.
2018. Gibbons, William. Unlimited Replays: Video Games and Classical Music. New York: Oxford University Press.
2014. Donnelly, K.J., William Gibbons, and Neil Lerner, Eds. Music in Video Games: Studying Play. New York: Routledge, 2014.
2013. Gibbons, William. Building the Operatic Museum: Eighteenth-Century Opera in fin-de-siècle Paris. Rochester: University of Rochester Press.
Articles and Book Chapters (selected)
2024. “ ‘All Sound Will be Muted. All Life Will Scream’: Music, Sound, and Silence in Disco Elysium (2019).” In End Game: Apocalyptic Video Games, Contemporary Society, and Digital Media Culture, ed. Lorenzo DiTommaso, James Crossley, Alastair Lockhart, and Rachel Wagner. Berlin: De Gruyter.
2024. “Ode to Joysticks: Canonic Fantasies and the Beethoven of Game Music.” In The Oxford Handbook of Video Game Music and Sound, ed. William Gibbons and Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard. New York: Oxford University Press.
2024. “Ludomusical Autobiography and the Indie Composer-Developer.” In The Oxford Handbook of Video Game Music and Sound, ed. William Gibbons and Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard. New York: Oxford University Press.
2023. “Helen and Paris: Classicism and Frenchness in Camille Saint-Saëns’s Hélène.” Nineteenth Century Studies 35: 112–127.
2022. “Foreword: Dear Friends.” In The Music of Nobuo Uematsu in the Final Fantasy Series, ed. Richard Anatone. London: Intellect.
2021. “Open Worlds: Globalization, Localization, and Game Music.” In The Cambridge Companion to Video Game Music, ed. Tim Summers and Melanie Fritsch. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
2021. “Music in the Digital World.” Co-authored with Paula Harper. Oxford Bibliographies in Music, ed. Kate van Orden. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021.
2020. “ ‘Have You Played Atari Today?’ Music and Audience in an Early Video Game Advertising Campaign.” In The Oxford Handbook of Music and Advertising, ed. James Deaville, Siu-Lan Tan, and Ronald Rodman. New York: Oxford University Press.
2020. “Re-writing the Operatic Canon.” Co-authored with Flora Willson. In The Oxford Handbook of the Operatic Canon, ed. William Weber and Cormack Newark. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
2020. “The Uses and Disadvantages of Opera History: Unhistorical Thinking in Fin-de-Siècle Paris.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Operatic Canon, ed. William Weber and Cormack Newark. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
2020. “And So It Goes, On and On: Repetition in Nobuo Uematsu’s Final Fantasy Scores.” Co-authored with Julianne Grasso. In Surpassing the Limit Break: The Psychology of Final Fantasy, ed. Anthony Bean. Dallas: Leyline, 2020.
2020. “Rewritable Memory: Concerts, Canons, and Game Music History.” Journal of Sound and Music in Games 1 (2020): 75–81.
2020. “Song and the Transition to ‘Part-Talkie’ Japanese Role-Playing Games.” In Music in the Role-Playing Game: Heroes & Harmonies, ed. William Gibbons and Steven Reale, 9–20. New York: Routledge.
2019. “The Problem with Frenchness: Gluck’s Legacy in the fin-de-siècle Musical Press.” In Paul Dukas: Legacies of a French Musician, ed. Helen Julia Minors and Laura Watson, 38–52. New York: Routledge.
2018. “Little Harmonic Labyrinths: Baroque Musical Style on the Nintendo Entertainment System.” In Recomposing the Past: Representations of Early Music on Stage and Screen, ed. James Cook, Alexander Kolassa, and Adam Whittaker, 139–152. New York: Routledge, 2018.
2018. “Video Game Music.” In Oxford Bibliographies in Music, ed. Bruce Gustafson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.
2017. “Music, Genre, and Nationality in Postmillennial Fantasy Role-Playing Games.” In The Routledge Companion to Screen Music and Sound, ed. Miguel Mera, Ron Sadoff, and Ben Winters, 412–427. New York: Routledge.
2016. “The Sounds in the Machine: Hirokazu Tanaka’s Cybernetic Soundscape for Metroid (1986).” In The Palgrave Handbook of Sound Design and Music in Screen Media: Integrated Soundtracks, ed. Liz Greene and Danijela Kulezic-Wilson, 347–359. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.
2016. Remixed Metaphors: Manipulating Classical Music and Its Meanings in Video Games.” In Ludomusicology: Approaches to Video Game Music, ed. Michiel Kamp, Tim Summers, and Mark Sweeney, 198–222. Sheffield: Equinox, 2016.
2016. “Game Audio.” In Debugging Game History: A Critical Lexicon, ed. Raiford Guins and Henry Lowood, 159–168. Cambridge: MIT Press.
2014. “Wandering Tonalities: Silence, Sound, and Morality in Shadow of the Colossus.” In Music in Video Games, ed. K.J. Donnelly, William Gibbons, and Neil Lerner, 122–137. New York: Routledge.
2012. “(De)Translating Mozart: The Magic Flute in 1909 Paris.” Opera Quarterly 28/4 (Winter 2012): 37–53.
2011. “ ‘Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams’: Popular Music, Narrative, and Dystopia in Bioshock.” Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research 11/3 (December 2011). Available online at http://gamestudies.org/1103/articles/gibbons.
2010. “Music of the Future, Music of the Past: Tannhäuser and Alceste at the Paris Opéra.” 19th Century Music 33/3 (Spring 2010): 228–42.
2009. “Blip, Bloop, Bach? Some Uses of Classical Music on the Nintendo Entertainment System.” Music and the Moving Image 2/1 (Spring 2009): 40–52.