RE Log - Fall 2020

FALL 2020 Ransom Everglades LOG 47 Ramesh Nyberg ’75 arrived to RE in the new position of Director of Security and Auxiliary Programs. He previ- ously managed his own investigations and security agency and has conducted law enforcement training classes na- tionwide. As a freelance writer, he wrote a column for the Miami Herald about police-community relations, and since 1987 has continued to write for law enforcement magazines. Mr. Nyberg spent 27 years serving the local com- munity in law enforcement, with over two decades as a homicide investigator. After retiring in 2006, he taught criminal justice at Coral Reef Senior High. He is a native Miamian, who spent his early years in Coconut Grove and South Miami after his parents arrived to Miami in the late 1950s. He has a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice administration from the University of Phoenix. Mr. Nyberg at- tended Ransom Everglades for two years and the school left an indelible mark on his life. He is married to RE mathematics and computer science teacher, Mandira Bose-Nyberg, and has six children, including a recent graduate from the RE Class of 2020. Jodie Roderick arrived to the physi- cal education depart- ment at Ransom Everglades from the Carol Morgan School in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, where she served as a physical and health education teacher and student advisor. She previously taught at Colegio Franklin Delano Roosevelt, American School of Lima, Peru; the International School of Dakar, Senegal; and International School of Panama. Ms. Roderick earned a Master of Arts in Teaching at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, R.I., and a Bachelor of Science in Business Marketing at the University of Rhode Island. She has coached soccer for more than eight years and is enthusiastic about the environment, collaborating on many Green Teams. Ms. Roderick has a two-year-old son, Zaiden, and loves to be active outdoors – surfing, skateboarding, working out and going to the beach. The Art of Gaming Everyone plays video games these days; few people take them seriously as works of art or cultural artifacts. That’s what RE English faculty member Matt Margini has set out to change, both in his new senior elective, Digital Narrative, and in a new book about Rockstar Games’ smash-hit Western, Red Dead Redemption . Conceiv- ed while he was completing his PhD in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and written after a months-long immersion in classic Western movies (including Stagecoach, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Searchers, The Wild Bunch and many more), Margini’s book sets out not only to understand what makes the game a master- piece, but also to delve deeply into the philosophical core of the genre as a whole. What is a Western, and what are Westerns really about? Why did they so thoroughly capture the imaginations of 20th-century moviegoers? When and why did the genre die?  Like his Digital Narrative course for seniors, which examines a diverse collection of games made by singular creative voices, Margini’s book is ultimately interested in Red Dead’s storytelling, and in the way Rockstar – the mischievous megastu- dio also responsible for Grand Theft Auto – managed to make a genuinely moving tragedy out of an open-ended game where you can ride horses, shoot deer and lasso outlaws. It’s a game that, like Grand Theft Auto, makes you believe in your own free- dom as a player, but then undercuts that freedom at every turn with the tragic story of John Marston, the game’s protagonist, an ex-outlaw forced by the state to hunt down his old gang. It’s a game where you get to be a cowboy in the most fully realized way that popular media has ever offered; it’s also a game that casts a shadow over the very idea of the cowboy, as Margini examines in a long essay examining Marston’s place in the long and often dark history of this quintessentially American icon. The book, like the Digital Narrative course, ultimately asks us to ponder how games can make meaning out of what they allow us to do and where they allow us to be. As Michael Clune, bestselling author of the memoir Gamelife , put it, “In Margini’s expert hands, Red Dead’s map of the West becomes the story of our digital obsessions: the beckoning horizon, the perfect gun, the leather- clad avatar. Each aspect of Red Dead’s fun is multiplied by history and myth in Margini’s lucid prose.” The book is now available in paperback from Boss Fight Books or in digital format from Amazon, Google and other sellers. Book Spotlight: Dr. Matt Margini, English Department Faculty