You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Computer games are one of the most exciting and rapidly evolving media of our time. Revenues from console and computer games have now overtaken those from Hollywood movies; and online gaming is one of the fastest-growing areas of the internet. Games are no longer just kids' stuff: the majority of players are now adults, and the market is constantly broadening. The visual style of games has become increasingly sophisticated, and the complexities of game-play are ever more challenging. Meanwhile, the iconography and generic forms of games are increasingly influencing a whole range of other media, from films and television to books and toys. This book provides a systematic, comprehensive introd...
This collection re-imagines the study of English and media in a way that decentralises the text (e.g. romantic poetry or film noir) or media formats/platforms (e.g. broadcast media/new media). Instead, the authors work across boundaries in meaningful thematic contexts that reflect the ways in which people engage with reading, watching, making, and listening in their textual lives. In so doing, this project recasts both subjects as combined in a more reflexive, critical space for the study of our everyday social and cultural interactions. Across the chapters, the authors present applicable learning and teaching strategies that weave together art works, films, social practices, creativity, 'viral' media, theater, TV, social media, videogames, and literature. The culmination of this range of strategies is a reclaimed 'blue skies' approach to progressive textual education, free from constraining shackles of outdated ideas about textual categories and value that have hitherto alienated generations of students and both English and media from themselves.
Making New Media offers a series of case studies from the author's work with students and teachers from the mid-90s to the present day, charting the dramatic rise of new media in schools. Work across a wide range of media is presented: computer animation, digital video and film, computer games and machinima. The author tackles the vital contemporary themes of literacy and creativity, making an innovative argument for the combination of traditions of social semiotics and cultural studies in the study of literacy and new media. This volume should be read by every undergraduate and graduate student, as well as any faculty member, involved with or interested in any aspect of new media.
Digital gaming’s cultural significance is often minimized much in the same way that the Middle Ages are discounted as the backward and childish precursor to the modern period. Digital Gaming Reimagines the Middle Ages challenges both perceptions by examining how the Middle Ages have persisted into the contemporary world via digital games as well as analyzing how digital gaming translates, adapts, and remediates medieval stories, themes, characters, and tropes in interactive electronic environments. At the same time, the Middle Ages are reinterpreted according to contemporary concerns and conflicts, in all their complexity. Rather than a distinct time in the past, the Middle Ages form a spa...
Examining the changes in male roles, and how these changes are explored in cinema, this book includes frameworks for teaching the topic, and accessible explanations of the cultural and critical background to changes in male roles. It provides in-depth film case studies that explore the changes and challenges to masculinity in the 21st century.
Understanding that video games are a fundamentally human creation, in this volume international scholars, designers, developers, and most importantly gamers, share with us their common connection though video game culture.
A clear and easy to use guide for introducing this fascinating topic into the classroom.
Drawing on research into autobiographical video production by young learners to present a theory of curatorship and new media, this work explores facets of literacy and identity theory which provided the initial frames for examining the work and shows how 'curatorship' works as a metaphor for new cultural and literacy practices.
Combining the creative perspectives of filmmakers with more analytic academic methods, this study invites film students to take an active approach in learning to understand how audiovisual language is used to create meaning in films. While the main focus is on the concept of film language, case study readings of The Warrior (2002) and Traffic (2001) place these films in their institutional contexts to demonstrate the multifaceted nature of how meaning is created. This study gives particular emphasis to understanding cinemaphotography, editing, music, and setting. Students are encouraged to reflect on their own responses and develop reading skills through a range of online classroom activities that demonstrate how audience interaction works to create meaning in film. Technical terms and techniques are explained in an extensive glossary and in special explanatory sections illustrated by a range of films.