By licensing—and disciplining—history, the Assassin's Creed series seeks to turn cultural capital into gaming capital.
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Archive for November, 2012
Mediating the Past: Licensing History, One Game At a Time
It’s Science Time! ‘Princess Scientists’ and Princess Bubblegum
Instead of taking science and decorating it with feminine elements, we need to embrace the possibilities of the princess and the scientist dissolving into each other to form a true ‘princess scientist.' Princess Bubblegum, from Cartoon Network's Adventure Time, creates a space in science where being feminine is acceptable.
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Report From the TV Academy Faculty Seminar (Part 2)
A group of TV Studies faculty share more impressions from a week-long Television Academy seminar.
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Midwifes and Melodrama: Call the Midwife & PBS
PBS perhaps hoped that BBC1’s Call the Midwife could be their next big hit, following on from the success of ITV1’s Downton Abbey. Faye Woods contemplates the significance of Call the Midwife's inability to match Downton Abbey's ratings and buzz in the US.
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Report From the TV Academy Faculty Seminar (Part 1)
A group of TV Studies faculty share their impressions from a week-long Television Academy seminar.
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Psy, Let’s talk about Gangnam Style
While Gangnam Style may run the risk of mocking K-pop and becoming the new Macarena, it may be worth the risk, as Psy has (temporary) increased the visibility of the Korean Wave within the US.
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Magic Vaginas, The End of Men, and Working Like a Dog
Recent discourse has juxtaposed the magical power of vaginas, how easy it is to rape sluts, and how we shouldn’t be mean to Mrs. Romney by implying that she doesn’t work, alongside reports of some mythical majority of female breadwinners who were emerging victorious from the post-recessionary economic slugfest.
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What Are You Missing? November 4-17
Ten (or more) media industry news items you might have missed recently.
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ESPN and EA Sports’ NHL Season Simulation
While the lockout prohibits NHL players from lacing up for their teams, it has not prevented video game behemoth EA Sports from promoting its annual National Hockey League game.
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Mediating the Past: Treme and the Stories of the Storm
Treme does not simply revisit a post-Katrina sequence of events. It tracks the mediated versions of them, underlining, commenting and critiquing previous formulations, re-inventing the story and becoming part it.
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“Easter Eggs,” Errata, and Apple Maps
In honor of Geography Awareness Week I thought it apropos to take a closer look at some participatory cultures and popular grievances that have concretized around errors in digital cartography -- especially in light of the recent and now infamous mapping debacle, Apple Maps.
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Secretarial Work and Women’s Clubs: Finding Women in the Archive
An exploration of the connection between the archive, archival research, and feminism.
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Fox News’ Post-Election Post-Mortem?
With election results now in, attention has inevitably turned to the one media source that has seemingly dedicated itself, 24/7, to making sure Obama was defeated and Republicans would take control of the Senate: Fox News.
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“Everybody Gets Wet?”: Class, Race and Region after Superstorm Sandy
A week after Hurricane Sandy, it is clear that media presentations of white ethnic working-class "shore" populations are distinct from, yet overlapping with, both those of the more privileged and more visible Manhattan, and also those of the poorer and more disenfranchised Lower 9th Ward after Hurricane Katrina.
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Methods of Failure: How Political Journalism lost the US Presidential Election to Nate Silver
Wednesday morning left both the electoral map and Republican politicians feeling a little blue, yet there was another group in need of collective introspection: political journalists, commentators and pundits.
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