Commentary for Britton and Lauren R

Britton: I know we talked earlier today but I thought it would be good for me to write down my thoughts on your paper in case you wanted to refer back to them.

My initial reaction to the first few paragraphs was "wow, this kid is a good writer".  You did a great job at articulating your argument and because of that it was easy for me to become engaged in your topic. Throughout the paper it was easy for me, even as an uniformed reader, to follow your ideas. The places where your paper was lacking was its use of the primary text and secondary sources. Now I fully realize that I read a rough draft and that you potentially have source material waiting in the wings so maybe this critique is nothing more than an after thought. In short, your paper is good, your ideas are great and really interesting, but they would benefit through more rigorous analysis of the primary text, and more thorough application of more scholarship.

Lauren: Your paper was a lot of fun to read.  Iago is such an interesting and unique character the fact that paper deals specifically in the dynamics of that character made it really engaging for me. I know we have talked in class we have talked a lot about how to really hone in on the argument for the topic of you have chosen. I have to say that after reading your rough draft I thought your ideas on the complexity of identity and character were really articulated well and made sense. I know at the end of your post you talked about incorporating more scholarship, and I do think that it needs that, but I think your ideas are salient enough that it would not be too difficult to find more research on your topic. One place where I found you paper lacking was the incorporation of the primary text. The paragraph where you do break down Iago's lines was, to me, definitely your strongest. If you had more analysis like that it would really strengthen the "backbone" of your paper. Overall, I think you are heading in the right direction and I'm exited to see the finished product.

So Happy Together: Social Scholarship

Chris Bateman's Beyond Game Design 

So I have more to report about effort on this subject this week than results, but I still think what I did was important. I emailed three people directly who I think would have great insights on my project: Jane McGonigal, Clint Hocking, and Chris Bateman. McGonigal is a very famous game designer and game activist (she kind of made that a thing all by herself) who believes games can change the world. Hocking is an influential game designer and thinker. Bateman is a philosopher, game designer, and author of Beyond Game Design: Nine Steps Toward Creating Better Video Games. I emailed all three of them slight variations on the following:

My name is Paul Bills and I'm an undergrad English Major at Brigham Young University. I'm currently doing a research project on Shakespeare and video games and I've found your book Beyond Game Design helpful and very insightful.

My basic point is that we need a "Shakespeare of Games." Shakespeare was himself as much an innovator as a storyteller, mostly taking old stories and adapting them to the new medium of English theater. He took this medium from simple popular entertainment to a true art form. Sometime, I argue, someone could/will do the same for video games and change the world of art and expression all over again.

My question for you, then, is simple: What do you think it would take to create such a "Shakespeare of Games"? Is it possible for just one person, or will it have to be a whole team? Or has it already happened, in your opinion? If so, who?

Also--do you see games ever being studied as part of the "liberal arts" with a "canon" and "conventional interpretations" and other such academic dressings, or will games remain part of "cultural studies" more for sociologists/psychologists? Or are they something entirely new?

Any insight you have would be great.

Thanks,

Paul Bills

I chose this messaging because I'm hoping to add any comments I get back from them to the conclusion of my paper--my "so what?" point about calling people to action to take game design to the next level and strive to seek/become the "Shakespeare of games." I haven't received any response yet, but the other reason I chose these three is because they all were very open to being contacted on their websites and all encouraged opening conversations with them. I also was sure to specifically reference the work of theirs that I had read and appreciated to show that I knew what I was talking about (you can see I mentioned Bateman's book in the example above).

Also, Mikaela's post about possible publishing venues got me really excited because the Shakespeare festival is specifically looking for papers on The Tempest this year (already bought my tickets to go see it August 15th!). David has also been a huge help. Dr. Burton, he, and I just sat and talked about my paper for a straight hour on Wednesday. David also offered to have me come over and play some of his favorite games to help me out, an offer I'm pretty sure I'm going to take him up on sometime soon.

As far as helping other people, I think it was last Friday that I talked with Kaylee about her thesis in class and brought up a panel I had attended during the English Symposium that talked about heroes and villains and we talked a lot about the lack of strict heroes or villains in Shakespeare, and whether or not Henry V was an exception. It was a great discussion and Kaylee's since integrated it into her work.

Also, since Britton's topic is so close to mine, talks with him have been very helpful and I feel like I've helped him in return. I brought up the theme of free will v. fate in Julius Caesar and how that would be low-hanging fruit for a game theme because games give players the illusion of free will when really the player is fated to one destiny no matter what they do because the designers (or narrative games, anyway) have to bring the story to a conclusion.

The Birth of a Paper

My idea for my paper about teaching Shakespeare from a rhetorical approach started because of the individual play I chose to read, Julius Caesar.

Jessica's Taming of the Shrew Annotated Bibliography

Social Graphmy friends, dinner group, work associates, goodreads, parents, teachers

New Media

• I found this Blog entitled Wordy Wednesday http://shealwayslovedlarking.blogspot.com/2012/07/wordy-wednesday-wedding-wisdom-from.html 
• The speech she gave at the wedding is something that I’m looking at more in depth since it directly discusses marriage in Shakespeare’s time and I might wish to contact her directly in the future.  http://shealwayslovedlarking.blogspot.com/p/shakespeare-wedding-speech.html
• I also found this short blog post about Elizabethan marriage in the play Julius Caesar which I’ll look at for the overarching ideas. http://room211capa.blogspot.com/2012/10/julius-caesar-shakespeares-vision-of.html
• This blog is about Much Ado about nothing but states that Beatrice is a shrew for always speaking her mind.  I hadn’t thought of that comparison before and am intrigued to follow that thought process. http://npshakespeare.blogspot.com/2012/09/gender-roles-and-marriage.html

Social Networks
Goodreads Shakespeare Group I’m posting my “Tweethis” here and seeing what response I get, Facebook ditto!

Traditional Scholarly Sources

• Smith, Amy L. “Performing Marriage with a Difference: Wooing, Wedding, and Bedding in The Taming of the Shrew.” Comparative Drama 36, nos. 3-4 (fall-winter 2002-2003): 289-320.
• Martins, Maria Lúcia Milléo. “The Taming of the Shrew:  Shakespeare’s Theater of Repetition.” In Foreign Accents: Brazilian Readings of Shakespeare, edited by Aimara da Cunha Resends, pp. 126-37. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2002.
• This has the changing ideas of marriage and how women are supposed to behave and act even though they are the vehicles through which men receive property and money.
• Crocker, Holly A. “Affective Resistance: Performing passivity and Playing A-Part in The Taming of the Shrew.” Shakespeare Quarterly 54, no.2 (summer 2003): 142-59.
• Argues that feminine virtue is a performance that allows women to obtain their desires of free agency within the play.