Edited by: Dietmar Meinel, University of Duisburg-Essen
Volume 5 in the series Video Games and the Humanities
Forthcoming February 21, 2022
I’m pleased to share my very first Coda in Video Games and Spatiality in American Studies forthcoming in Feb 2022. It is included in a groundbreaking anthology on games and space in American Studies, edited by Dietmar Meinel. Contributors include: Sören Schoppmeier, Stefan Schubert, Michael Nitsche, Hanne Nijtmans, Nathalie Aghoro and many more.
While video games have blossomed into the foremost expression of contemporary popular culture over the past decades, their critical study occupies a fringe position in American Studies. In its engagement with video games, this book contributes to their study but with a thematic focus on a particularly important subject matter in American Studies: spatiality. The volume explores the production, representation, and experience of places in video games from the perspective of American Studies. Contributions critically interrogate the use of spatial myths (“wilderness,” “frontier,” or “city upon a hill”), explore games as digital borderlands and contact zones, and offer novel approaches to geographical literacy. Eventually, Playing the Field II brings the rich theoretical repertoire of the study of space in American Studies into conversation with questions about the production, representation, and experience of space in video games.
SORAYA MURRAY 