Showing posts with label Crusades. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crusades. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 4, 2023

Out Now: Playing the Crusades


New from Routledge:

Playing the Crusades

Engaging the Crusades, Volume Five


Edited By Robert Houghton

Copyright Year 2021

Full details and ordering information available at this link. 

Paperback
$18.36
Hardback
$47.96
eBook
$18.36


ISBN 9780367716356 (pb)
Published September 26, 2022 by Routledge
122 Pages



Book Description


Engaging the Crusades is a series of volumes which offer windows into a newly emerging field of historical study: the memory and legacy of the crusades. Together these volumes examine the reasons behind the enduring resonance of the crusades and present the memory of crusading in the modern period as a productive, exciting, and much needed area of investigation.

This volume considers the appearance and use of the crusades in modern games; demonstrating that popular memory of the crusades is intrinsically and mutually linked with the design and play of these games. The essays engage with uses of crusading rhetoric and imagery within a range of genres – including roleplaying, action, strategy, and casual games – and from a variety of theoretical perspectives drawing on gender and race studies, game design and theory, and broader discussions on medievalism. Cumulatively, the authors reveal the complex position of the crusades within digital games, highlight the impact of these games on popular understanding of the crusades, and underline the connection between the portrayal of the crusades in digital games and academic crusade historiography.

Playing the Crusades is invaluable for scholars and students interested in the crusades, popular representations of the crusades, historical games, and collective memory.



Table of Contents



Introduction: crusades and crusading in modern games

Robert Houghton



A sacred task, no cross required: the image of crusading in computer gaming-related non-Christian science fiction universes

Roland Wenskus



‘I’m not responsible for the man you are!’: crusading and masculinities in Dante’s Inferno

Katherine J. Lewis



‘Show this fool knight what it is to have no fear’: freedom and oppression in Assassin’s Creed (2007)

Oana-Alexandra Chirilă



Crusader kings too? (Mis)Representations of the crusades in strategy games

Robert Houghton



Learning to think historically: some theoretical challenges when playing the crusades



Andreas Körber, Johannes Meyer-Hamme, and Robert Houghton



Editor(s)

Biography



Robert Houghton is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Winchester. His research focuses on religious and political relationship networks in the central Middle Ages and on representations of the medieval world in modern games. Recent publications include ‘Italian Bishops and Warfare during the Investiture Contest: The Case of Parma’ (2018) and ‘World, Structure and Play: Digital Games as Historical Research Tools’ (2018).




Friday, August 9, 2019

Kline's Digital Gaming Re-imagines the Middle Ages Now in Paperback

Routledge has recently released Daniel T. Kline's collection Digital Gaming Re-imagines the Middle Ages (2014) in a more affordable paperback edition. 

I originally posted on the book in 2013. This post serves as an update. 


Digital Gaming Re-imagines the Middle Ages
https://www.routledge.com/Digital-Gaming-Re-imagines-the-Middle-Ages-1st-Edition/Kline/p/book/9780415630917

Edited by Daniel T. Kline
Routledge
298 pages

Purchasing Options:$ = USD

Paperback: 9781138548572
pub: 2018-02-05
$51.95

Hardback: 9780415630917
pub: 2013-08-06
$160.00

eBook (VitalSource) : 9780203097236
pub: 2013-09-11


Description

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 space in which theory and narrative, gaming and textuality, identity and society are remediated and reimagined. Together, the essays demonstrate that while having its roots firmly in narrative traditions, neomedieval gaming—where neomedievalism no longer negotiates with any reality beyond itself and other medievalisms—creates cultural palimpsests, multiply-layered trans-temporal artifacts. Digital Gaming Re-imagines the Middle Ages demonstrates that the medieval is more than just a stockpile of historically static facts but is a living, subversive presence in contemporary culture.


Table of Contents

Introduction: "All Your History Are Belong to Us": Digital Gaming Re-imagines the Middle Ages - Daniel T. Kline

Part 1: Prehistory of Medieval Gaming
1. The Right to Dream of the Middle Ages: Simulating the Medieval in Tabletop RPGs - William J. White

Part 2: Gaming Re-imagines Medieval Traditions
2. "Best and Only Bulwark": How Epic Narrative Redeems Beowulf the Game - Candace Barrington and Timothy English
3. Systematizing Culture in Medievalism: Geography, Dynasty, Culture, and Imperialism in Crusader Kings: Deus Vult - Jason Pitruzzello
4. The Portrayal of Medieval Warfare in Medieval: Total War and Medieval 2: Total War - Greg Fedorenko
5. Gabriel Knight: A Twentieth-Century Chivalric Romance Hero - Angela Tenga

Part 3: Case Study 1 – World of Warcraft 
6. Coloring Tension: Medieval and Contemporary Concepts in Classifying and Using Digital Objects in World of Warcraft - Elysse T. Meredith
7. Sir Thomas Malory and the Death Knights of New Avalon: Imagining Medieval Identities in World of Warcraft - Kristen Noone and Jennifer Kavetsky
8. Accumulating Histories: A Social Practice Approach to Medievalism in High Fantasy MMORPGs - Jennifer C. Stone, Peter Kudenov, and Teresa Combs
9. "Awesome Cleavage": The Genred Body in World of Warcraft - Kim Wilkins

Part 4: Case Study 2 – Dante's Inferno, The Game
10. The Game's Two Bodies, or the Fate of Figura in Dante's Inferno - Bruno Lessard
11. Courtly e-Violence, Digital Play: Adapting Medieval Courtly Masculinities in Dante’s Inferno - Oliver Chadwick
12. Shades of Dante: Virtual Bodies in Dante's Inferno - Timothy J. Welsh and John T. Sebastian
13. The Middle Ages in the Depths of Hell: Pedagogical Possibility and the Past in Dante's Inferno - Angela Jane Weisl and Kevin J. Stevens

Part 5: Theoretical and Representational Issues in Medieval Gaming
14. We Will Travel by Map: Maps as Narrative Spaces in Videogames and Medieval Texts - Thomas Rowland
15. Author, Text, and Medievalism in The Elder Scrolls - Michelle DiPietro
16. Technophilia and Technophobia in Online Medieval Fantasy Games - Nick Webber
17. The Consolation of Paranoia: Conspiracy, Epistemology, and the Templars in Assassin's Creed, Deus Ex, and Dragon Age Harry J. Brown

Part 6: Sociality and Social Media in Medieval Gaming
18. Casual Medieval Games, Interactivity, and Social Play in Social Network and Mobile Applications - Serina Patterson


About the Series

Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyberculture
This series is our home for innovative research in the field of digital media. It includes monographs and targeted edited collections that provide new insights into this subject as its influence and significance grow into the twenty-first century.


About the Editor

Daniel T. Kline is Professor of English at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, USA.


Monday, February 15, 2016

Kalamazoo 2016 Round Table

Here are the details of our sponsored round table session for this year's Medieval Congress:

51st International Congress on Medieval Studies
Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo, MI)
Thursday, 12 May, 7:30 PM
Session 164 (Bernhard 158)

More Middle Ages on Screen? Reconsidering The Reel Middle Ages (A Roundtable)
Sponsor: Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages
Organizer: Michael A. Torregrossa, Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages

Presider: Susan L. Aronstein, Univ. of Wyoming

Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven (2005): Medieval History as Caricature
June-Ann Greeley, Sacred Heart Univ.

Postmodern Medieval: BBC’s Robin Hood Series (2006–09)
Mikee Delony, Abilene Christian Univ.

What’s Love Got to Do with It?: Kevin Reynold’s Tristan & Isolde (2006)
Kate McGrath, Central Connecticut State Univ.

The Legend Continues: Exploring the Development of Arthur in Guy Ritchie’s The Knights of the Round Table: King Arthur (2016)
Kayla Sanderson, Abilene Christian Univ.


The full program can be accessed at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/events/sessions.

Friday, June 21, 2013

Coming Soon: Digital Gaming Re-imagines the Middle Ages

One last post for the night:


Digital Gaming Re-imagines the Middle Ages 
Edited by Daniel T. Kline 

Series: Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyberculture

To Be Published July 22nd 2013 by Routledge

Hardback: $125.00 978-0-415-63091-7
Available for pre-order


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 space in which theory and narrative, gaming and textuality, identity and society are remediated and reimagined. Together, the essays demonstrate that while having its roots firmly in narrative traditions, neomedieval gaming—where neomedievalism no longer negotiates with any reality beyond itself and other medievalisms—creates cultural palimpsests, multiply-layered trans-temporal artifacts. Digital Gaming Re-imagines the Middle Ages demonstrates that the medieval is more than just a stockpile of historically static facts but is a living, subversive presence in contemporary culture.


Introduction: "All Your History Are Belong to Us": Digital Gaming Re-imagines the Middle Ages
Daniel T. Kline


Part 1: Prehistory of Medieval Gaming

1. The Right to Dream of the Middle Ages: Simulating the Medieval in Tabletop RPGs
William J. White


Part 2: Gaming Re-imagines Medieval Traditions

2. "Best and Only Bulwark": How Epic Narrative Redeems Beowulf the Game
Candace Barrington and Timothy English

3. Systematizing Culture in Medievalism: Geography, Dynasty, Culture, and Imperialism in Crusader Kings: Deus Vult 
Jason Pitruzzello

4. The Portrayal of Medieval Warfare in Medieval: Total War and Medieval 2: Total War
Greg Fedorenko

5. Gabriel Knight: A Twentieth-Century Chivalric Romance Hero
Angela Tenga


Part 3: Case Study 1 – World of Warcraft

6. Coloring Tension: Medieval and Contemporary Concepts in Classifying and Using Digital Objects in World of Warcraft 
Elysse T. Meredith

7. Sir Thomas Malory and the Death Knights of New Avalon: Imagining Medieval Identities in World of Warcraft 
Kristen Noone and Jennifer Kavetsky

8. Accumulating Histories: A Social Practice Approach to Medievalism in High Fantasy MMORPGs
Jennifer C. Stone, Peter Kudenov, and Teresa Combs

9. "Awesome Cleavage": The Genred Body in World of Warcraft 
Kim Wilkins


Part 4: Case Study 2 – Dante's Inferno, The Game

10. The Game's Two Bodies, or the Fate of Figura in Dante's Inferno 
 Bruno Lessard

11. Courtly e-Violence, Digital Play: Adapting Medieval Courtly Masculinities in Dante’s Inferno 
Oliver Chadwick

12. Shades of Dante: Virtual Bodies in Dante's Inferno 
Timothy J. Welsh and John T. Sebastian

13. The Middle Ages in the Depths of Hell: Pedagogical Possibility and the Past in Dante's Inferno 
Angela Jane Weisl and Kevin J. Stevens


Part 5: Theoretical and Representational Issues in Medieval Gaming

14. We Will Travel by Map: Maps as Narrative Spaces in Videogames and Medieval Texts
Thomas Rowland

15. Author, Text, and Medievalism in The Elder Scrolls 
Michelle DiPietro

16. Technophilia and Technophobia in Online Medieval Fantasy Games
Nick Webber

17. The Consolation of Paranoia: Conspiracy, Epistemology, and the Templars in Assassin's Creed, Deus Ex, and Dragon Age 
Harry J. Brown


Part 6: Sociality and Social Media in Medieval Gaming

18. Casual Medieval Games, Interactivity, and Social Play in Social Network and Mobile Applications
Serina Patterson