The Middle Ages in Modern Games Twitter Conference Banner

Intellect is proud to sponsor the Middle Ages in Modern Games Twitter Conference

MAMG 2022 is occurring 7-11 June 2022 and more information about the conference can be found here.

To obtain 30% off selected books, please use the code MAMG30 at the checkout when purchasing books online. Books will be eligible for a 30% discount between 7 June and 7 July 2022. Click here for the full list of discounted books.

See our full journals selection here. Within game studies we publish Journal of Gaming & Virtual WorldsVirtual Creativity and Journal of Fandom Studies.

We are looking to contract new books and reach out to new journal contributors within the subject areas of game studies, fandom, popular culture and much more. For more information on publishing with us click here.

Please contact james@intellectbooks.com if you'd like to discuss a proposal or would like to link up at the conference. 

See our latest catalogues and collections, and sign up to our newsletters here.

Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook to keep up to date with new publications!

 

Spotlight titles

 

A Game Music Companion

Discusses the use of music in a well-loved and culturally significant game – Ocarina of Time. Examining music in different contexts, it identifies music’s role and function within the game and in gameplay overall, and uses this to investigate wider issues in music and media studies and fan cultures. New in paperback. 119 b/w illus.

A Primer of Case Studies, Theories, and Analyses for the Player-Academic

This collection of essays addresses the fascinating intersection between nostalgia and videogame music. From Nintendo to PlayStation, Zelda to Bioshock, and cult to classic games – this anthology takes readers on a musical journey into personal, historical and virtual pasts. 15 b/w illus.

Edited by Richard Anatone

This is the first book-length study of the music of Nobuo Uematsu, and focuses on his Final Fantasy soundtracks, exploring the dynamic relationship between the music and the stories behind the beloved video game series. Contributors are music and game scholars, based in the USA and UK. Foreword by William Gibbons. 95 b/w illus.

Costume Play, Identity and Global Fandom

Planet Cosplay is authored by widely published scholars in this field, examining the central aspects of cosplay ranging from sources and sites to performance and play, from sex and gender to production and consumption. 

The first book to comprehensively engage with Disney fans and the company's relationship with them, spanning theme parks, film, television, stage productions and novels, as well as a variety of fannish interventions. It addresses timely issues such as race and queerness, the Covid- 19 pandemic and the advent of Disney+. 20 b&w illus.   Chapter 5 - Panel Discussion: The Live Action Mulan (2020) and Disney’s Approach to Racial Diversity is now available for free here.   New Books Network (New Books in Film) interview with Sabrina Mittermeier

Winter is coming. Every Sunday night, millions of fans gather around their televisions to take in the spectacle that is a new episode of Game of Thrones. Much is made of who will be gruesomely murdered each week on the hit show, though sometimes the question really is who won't die a fiery death. The show, based on the Song of Ice and Fire series written by George R. R. Martin, is a truly global phenomenon. With the seventh season of the HBO series in production, Game of Thrones has been nominated for multiple awards, its cast has been catapulted to celebrity and references to it proliferate throughout popular culture. Often positioned as the grittier antithesis to J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Martin's narrative focuses on the darker side of chivalry and heroism, stripping away these higher ideals to reveal the greed, amorality and lust for power underpinning them. Fan Phenomena: Game of Thrones is an exciting new addition to the Intellect series, bringing together academics and fans of Martin's universe to consider not just the content of the books and HBO series, but fan responses to both. From trivia nights dedicated to minutiae to forums speculating on plot twists to academics trying to make sense of the bizarre climate of Westeros, everyone is talking about Game of Thrones. Edited by Kavita Mudan Finn, the book focuses on the communities created by the books and television series and how these communities envision themselves as consumers, critics, and even creators of fanworks in a wide variety of media, including fiction, art, fancasting and cosplay.

Few, if any, books come close to being as beloved – or as ubiquitous – as The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The book delves into the philosophy of the series and its fans, the distinctions between the films’ fans and the books’ fans, the process of adaptation, and the role of New Zealand in the translation of words to images. Lavishly illustrated, it is guaranteed to appeal to anyone who has ever closed the last page of The Return of the King and wished it to never end.

In this anthology, a panel of rising and established popular culture scholars examines the phenomenon of Star Trek fan culture and its most compelling dimensions. The resulting collection is both critical and respectful, capturing the practices and attitudes of a fan culture that is arguably the world's best-known and most misunderstood. 

There has been plenty of scholarship on science fiction over the decades, but it has left one crucial aspect of the genre all but unanalysed: the visual. Ambitious and original, Landscape and the Science Fiction Imaginary corrects that oversight, making a powerful argument for science fiction as a visual cultural discourse. Taking influential historical works of visual art as starting points, along with illustrations, movie matte paintings, documentaries, artist's impressions and digital environments, John Timberlake focuses on the notion of science fiction as an "imaginary topos," one that draws principally on the intersection between landscape and historical/prehistorical time. Richly illustrated, this book will appeal to scholars, students and fans of science fiction and the remarkable visual culture that surrounds it.

Squaring the Circle

Franck Boulègue's latest book about David Lynch and Mark Frost's famous television series focuses on the eighteen new episodes directed by Lynch for season 3, screened in 2017. Analyses the season with special importance given to readings from an intertextual, ontological and spiritual perspectives. Now in paperback and with 81 colour illus.

The peer-reviewed Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds explores the cultural effects of gaming and virtual worlds across platforms and genres, as their increasing popularity begins to affect culture as a whole. It also critically evaluates cutting-edge market trends and technological developments. Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the University of Alberta, Canada. This title is indexed with Scopus and the Web of Science’s Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI). For more information, to access the journal or to subscribe visit the Discover platform here. JGVW is not currently accepting open submissions. We are currently only accepting submissions for our forthcoming Special Issues, 'Consensual Play' and 'Time, Play and Games'

Journal of Fandom Studies seeks to offer scholars a dedicated, peer-reviewed publication that promotes current scholarship into the fields of fan and audience studies across a variety of media. We focus on the critical exploration, within a wide range of disciplines and fan cultures, of issues surrounding production and consumption of popular media (including film, music, television, sports and gaming). For more information, to access the journal or to subscribe visit the Discover platform here.

Virtual Creativity (VCR) is an academic peer-reviewed journal focusing on creativity in online virtual worlds and platforms, as well as in contemporary media art practices and applied contexts. Pieces exploring digital creativity are sought from the perspective of Art, Science and Technology. Examining a widespread field of discourse, VCR seeks to engage with ways in which the virtual reflects on the implications of the physical. Formerly published as Metaverse Creativity, 2010–2016 (ISSN: 20403550, Online ISSN: 20403569). This title is indexed with Scopus. For more information, to access the journal or to subscribe visit the Discover platform here.