Monday, May 30, 2011

New from the Shrekverse

Coming Soon Anonymous FF

Seems to offer an alternate history of Shakespeare:

Chiller Listings for June

Chiller's medieval-themed listings are fairly light this month (though there are incomplete specifics at present for the airings of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Outer Limits, and The Twilight Zone).

TUES, 14 JUNE

09:00A ET
Supernatural Science: King Arthur


TUES, 28 JUNE

03:30P ET
Monsters: Sleeping Dragon

SyFy June Listings

Relevant listings for SyFy in June. Be sure to check out the marathon on June 24.

WEDNESDAY, 1 JUNE

02:00 AM Movie: In The Name Of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale

06:00 PM Ghost Hunters, Season 7: Knights Of The Living Dead


SUN, 5 JUNE

01:30 PM Movie: In The Name Of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale


WEDNES., 8 JUNE

12:00 PM Ghost Hunters International (season 1.5): Dracula's Castle


SAT., 11 JUNE

03:00 AM Movie: Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath Of The Dragon God


SUN., 19 JUNE

11:00 PM Movie: In The Name Of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale


MON., 20 JUNE

01:30 AM Movie: Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath Of The Dragon God


THURS., 23 JUNE

06:00 PM Movie: Chronicles Of Narnia, The: Prince Caspian


FRI., 24 JUNE

08:30 AM Syfy Original Movie: Book Of Beasts, The
10:30 AM Syfy Original Movie: Grendel
12:30 PM Syfy Original Movie: Beyond Sherwood Forest
02:30 PM Movie: Chronicles Of Narnia, The: Prince Caspian

Monday, May 9, 2011

CFP All Your History Are Belong to Us: The Middle Ages, Medievalism, and Digital Gaming (Collection)

All Your History Are Belong to Us: The Middle Ages, Medievalism, and Digital Gaming


CFP: All Your History Are Belong to Us: The Middle Ages, Medievalism, and Digital Gaming

The Middle Ages remains a vibrant presence in contemporary culture, and while cinematic medievalism has been intensively investigated in the last decade, digital gaming has received relatively little attention despite its widespread cultural impact. For example, the video game market now grosses more domestically than Hollywood, and World of Warcraft boasts more than 12 million monthly paying subscribers (25 million total units). Gaming theory too has seen its share of innovation, and digital technologies are now a regular feature of higher education and cultural studies. Medievalism, in its various guises, has also been the subject of intense scrutiny in anthologies by Anke Bernau and Bettina Bildhauer, Medieval Film (2009); Karl Fugelso, Memory and Medievalism (2007); and David Marshall, Mass Market Medieval Essays on the Middle Ages in Popular Culture (2007). Further, the turn toward speculative medievalisms, object-oriented philosophy, and Actor-Network Theory has initiated new methodologies, raised new questions, and offered new possibilities for understanding actor-actant networks and overcoming the subject-object distinction, all of which enrich our understanding of digital and historical realities and problematize traditional understandings of subjectivity, temporality, and textuality.

A few of the more popular medievally-inflected gaming titles (and series) include:

• Age of Empires: Age of Kings
• Diablo
• MediEvil
• Arthur: Quest for Excalibur
• Dragon Age
• Medieval Total War
• Assassin's Creed
• Dungeon Siege
• Morrowind
• Baldur's Gate
• Dynasty Warriors
• Oblivion
• Beowulf
• Elder Scrolls
• Sims Medieval
• Civilization
• Fable
• Shogun Total War
• Dante's Inferno
• Jeanne d'Arc
• Stronghold
• Dark Age of Camelot
• Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader
• Warcraft & World of Warcraft

I am soliciting 500 word proposals for a volume dealing with the Middle Ages, medievalism, and contemporary digital gaming, broadly defined. Some possibilities include:

• Gaming and medieval texts; medieval texts and digital textualities
• Gaming genres (Sword and sorcery/fantasy games, etc.), game types (MMORPG, FPS, RPG, RTS, stealth, survival/horror, etc.), single-player/cooperative/multiplayer games
• Gaming, speculative medievalisms, and counterfactual history
• Gaming, secret societies, arcane religions, and the 'templarization' of history (Dead Space, Mass Effect, and others)
• Gaming, digital sociologies, and electronic epistemologies
• Gaming, object-oriented philosophy, complexity, and Actor-Network Theory
• Gaming, digital communities, and electronic subjectivities
• Gaming, gender, sexuality, class, age; trans-developmental and trans-temporal subjectivities
• Gaming and race and nation; digital orientalism and postcolonialism; space-based societies
• Gaming and cross-platform media (games and/as film tie-ins)
• Gaming and pedagogy
• Gaming, discursive/symbolic violence, and ethics
• Gaming, social simulations, LARPing and LARPers (Live-Action Role Playing & Players)
• Gaming and cheats, glitches, hacks, mods
• Gaming, the academy, medievalism, and generational divides.

Please send your proposals (and any questions) to Dan Kline, University of Alaska, Department of English, 3211 Providence Drive, ADM 101-H, Anchorage, AK 99508 at afdtk@uaa.alaska.edu by May 1, 2011.

Please cross-post freely

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Comics Get Medieval 2012 Call for Papers

The Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages is pleased to announce our sponsorship of sessions under the theme of "The Comics Get Medieval 2012: A Celebration of Medieval-Themed Comics in Commemoration of the 75th Anniversary of Prince Valiant" for the 2012 Joint Meeting of the Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association to be held in Boston, Massachusetts, from 4-7 April 2012.

Complete details can be accessed at The Medieval Comics Project Blog at http://medieval-comics-project.blogspot.com/2011/05/comics-get-medieval-2012-call-for.html.