Giorcelli, Cristina and Paula Rabinowitz, eds. Accessorizing the Body.

Accessorizing the Body is the first out of the four-volume series, entitled Habits of Being, which hosts a selection of essays from the ongoing research project Abito e Identità: Ricerche di Storia Letteraria e culturale. This vigorous study, edited by Cristina Giorcelli and Paula Rabinowitz, invites the reader, student or researcher to start a journey from the European capitals to the American continent during the riotous era of the First and the Second World War in order to investigate the ..

Aliki Varvogli, Travel and Dislocation in Contemporary American Fiction.

Travel and Dislocation in Contemporary American Fiction by Aliki Varvogli is the latest addition in the Routledge “Transnational Perspectives on American Literature” series. The writer’s ambitions to trace latest writing trends in American letters and update concerns about narratives of immigration in a post-Nelson Mandela era are expressed from the onset. Within the context of travel narratives and theories of dislocation, the book manages to show how the idea of the American in American let..

Gundolf S. Freyermuth Games/ Game Design/ Game Studies: An Introduction

Gundolf S. Freyermuth Games/ Game Design/ Game Studies: An Introduction Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld, Germany 2015. Pp. 290. ISBN: 978-3-8376-2983-5. Despoina Feleki Games, Game Design, Game Studies: An Introduction scrutinizes the developments in game production from analog to digital technology, Game Design theories, and, finally, the newly formed academic discipline of Game Studies. It attempts a critical assessment of the interdisciplinarity in media studies that accounts for, according ..

Christine Bold, ed. US Popular Print Culture: 1860-1920.

US Popular Print Culture 1860-1920 is the sixth volume in The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture series. Edited by Christine Bold, it records as well as critically and historically assesses the most important aspects of popular print culture, spanning from Antebellum America until World War I. This great publishing endeavor follows an encyclopedic approach, without proposing one encompassing cultural theory on which to ground all these essays about the popular. It accepts that “popular c..

Wikia Fandom Craze: Connecting, Participating, Creating, and Re-negotiating Boundaries

This article draws attention to latest online fandom practices that take place in online participatory environments as a result of intersecting technological and economic variables. After tracing the origins of fan practices in literary theories that regard readers as active agents in reading and meaning-making processes, the present study investigates fandom as a cultural event that is determined by changing technological, economic, and generic conditions. Through the study of Wikia—a vibrant online fan community—the article explores the de-territorialization of fan-fuelled media production and its re-territorialization as one of fans’ ways to enter what Pierre Bourdieu calls the industry’s “circle of belief.” Its wiki structure and technology as well as the latest smart Web tools that it employs allow fans to access, edit, and share media content, as they push the fuzzy boundaries between corporate and grassroots production further. The article maps out the efforts of media platform producers, of the industry, and of the fans to re-negotiate their roles and relationships, and looks into the different types of fan subjectivity that evolve as fans voluntarily succumb to the policies of the popular culture industry

Christian Potschka. Towards a Market in Broadcasting: Communications Policy in the UK and Germany.

Christian Potschka’s doctoral dissertation, entitled Towards a Market in Broadcasting: Communications Policy in the UK and Germany and published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2012, commences a thorough and vigorous investigation of the broadcasting policies adopted by the UK and Germany, the two leading European countries in telecommunication systems. The book stresses the interconnections between the developments in press and broadcasting technologies. It then tries to cover all the stages from t..

Space, Narrative and Digital Media in Teju Cole’s Open City

This article explores the metaphor of the novel as the actual “space” for creative expression to take place. It is “space” affected by social and technological developments, employed to “house” global concerns and perspectives. In this article, I intend to investigate the ways in which Teju Cole, an American writer of Nigerian descent, communicates his concerns to his audience and explores questions about crises and debates, responding to social, cultural, and technological challenges of the twenty-first century both in print and electronic spaces. In particular, I investigate the ways in which Cole employs both narrative fiction and Social Media as political space in order to comment on twenty-first century events like 9/11, global terrorism, and a renewed wave of racism. Key-words: narrative, social media, political, activist, 9/1

Christian Potschka. Towards a Market in Broadcasting: Communications Policy in the UK and Germany.

Christian Potschka’s doctoral dissertation, entitled Towards a Market in Broadcasting: Communications Policy in the UK and Germany and published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2012, commences a thorough and vigorous investigation of the broadcasting policies adopted by the UK and Germany, the two leading European countries in telecommunication systems. The book stresses the interconnections between the developments in press and broadcasting technologies. It then tries to cover all the stages from t..

Popular Authorship Reconfigured: Stephen King’s Authorial Personae from Print to Digital Environments

The convergence of literary practices with computer information technologies (ICTs) has immensely affected writing processes and theories of authorship. This paper aims to foreground contemporary sociocultural conditions which have reconfigured authorship in relation to the materiality of the product through the example of Stephen King’s writing and marketing choices. An investigation of selected printed and digital works, including Misery, Lisey’s Story, Duma’s Key, and UR, showcases King’s concern for the future of authorship in the digital age and the position of the writer in the book and entertainment industries. This article seeks to trace the trajectory of the concept of the author who is seen moving from print to digital environments and being entangled in new forms of communication with the reader. In particular, King, who leaves control of the narrative story to experts in digital mediation, takes advantage of the new medium’s immediacy, comes closer to the recipients of his works, and manages to re-invent his authorial image while his name turns into a brand