Conferences, book launches and drinking – an academic trifecta!
Saturday March 25, the newly formed and grandiosely titled Boston Media Collective would like to invite you all to come and have beers with us at Tommy Doyle’s in Kendall square to celebrate the publication (and pending arrival) of four significant tomes! We’ll commence after the evening plenary (so after 8pm) – we’ll be out the back, come and say hi and get yourself a beer.
The four books we’re launching are:
YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture
YouTube is one of the most well-known and widely discussed sites of participatory media in the contemporary online environment, and it is the first genuinely mass-popular platform for user-created video. In this timely and comprehensive introduction to how YouTube is being used and why it matters, Burgess and Green discuss the ways that it relates to wider transformations in culture, society and the economy.
The book critically examines the public debates surrounding the site, demonstrating how it is central to struggles for authority and control in the new media environment. Drawing on a range of theoretical sources and empirical research, the authors discuss how YouTube is being used by the media industries, by audiences and amateur producers, and by particular communities of interest, and the ways in which these uses challenge existing ideas about cultural ‘production’ and ‘consumption’.
Rich with both concrete examples and featuring specially commissioned chapters by Henry Jenkins and John Hartley, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in the contemporary and future implications of online media. It will be particularly valuable for students and scholars in media, communication and cultural studies.
Image by TCM Hitchiker via Flickr
Joystick Soldiers: The Politics of Play in Military Video Games
(Routledge, May 2009) Nina B. Huntemann and Matthew Thomas Payne
Joystick Soldiers is the first anthology to examine the reciprocal relationship between militarism and video games. War has been an integral theme of the games industry since the invention of the first video game, Spacewar! While war video games began as entertainment, military organizations soon saw their potential as combat simulation and recruitment tools. A profitable and popular relationship was established between the video game industry and the military, and continues today with the top-selling video game franchises America’s Army, which was developed by the U.S. Army as a recruitment tool, and SOCOM: U.S. Navy Seals, created in collaboration with the Naval Special Warfare Command.
This collection features all new essays that explore how modern warfare has been represented in and influenced by video games. The contributors explore the history and political economy of the “Military-Entertainment Complex;” present textual analyses of military-themed video games such as Splinter Cell, Call of Duty, and Halo; and offer reception studies of gamers, fandom, and political activism within online gaming.
This volume is essential reading for anyone interested in the relationship between war and media, and it sheds surprising light on the connections between virtual battlefields and the international conflicts unfolding in Iraq and Afghanistan today.
Fatal Attraction (Wiley, May 2009) Suzanne Leonard
Since its famed introduction of the “boiled bunny,” Fatal Attraction (1987) established itself as one of American cinema’s most controversial films. This insightful new book surveys the film’s formal features and its ideological impact, paying special attention to the film’s signature mix of sexuality, fear, and family values.
- Features detailed breakdowns of the formal techniques the film employs to create suspense, such as turning ordinary household objects into agents of terror
- Considers the film’s mixed-genre status as a thriller, melodrama, horror picture, and film noir
- Offers an explanation and analysis of the cultural storm ignited by the film, especially due to its treatment of single career women
- Investigates the film’s handling of extramarital sexuality, pregnancy, birth control, and AIDS
- Discusses the film’s lasting role in shaping American gender politics
Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Film/Television Work Worlds, (Routledge, May 2009). John Caldwell, Vicki Mayer, and Miranda Banks (Eds.)
Production Studies is a landmark collection that closely examines the texts, institutions, and practices of media industries in order to allow media studies students and scholars to think more precisely and holistically about media production as a cultural activity. The book is comprised of all new essays exploring the cultures, social organization, work practices, and belief systems of media practitioners. Each section results from a combination of situated fieldwork, empirical or from-the-ground-up studies, and critical analysis. Individual chapters draw upon a diverse array of earlier production studies across a range of ethnographic, sociological, critical, material, and political-economic methodologies as each author presents their own contemporary research.
The contributors include distinguished and new scholars from a range of academic disciplines—Film and Media Studies, Communication, Sociology, and Anthropology. The authors and editors are especially interested in how the cultural activities of production workers fit within and animate the new realities of a post-Fordist and neoliberal economy, flexible and outsourced labor practices, multimedia convergence, and multinational, corporate conglomeration.
joshgreen
