FEATURING: IAN BOGOST - LEIGH ALEXANDER - ZOE QUINN - ANITA SARKEESIAN & KATHERINE CROSS - IAN SHANAHAN - ANNA ANTHROPY - EVAN NARCISSE - HUSSEIN IBRAHIM - CARA ELLISON & BRENDAN KEOGH - DAN GOLDING - DAVID JOHNSTON - WILLIAM KNOBLAUCH - MERRITT KOPAS - OLA WIKANDER The State of Play is a call to consider the high stakes of video game culture and how our digital and real lives collide. Here, video games are not hobbies or pure recreation; they are vehicles for art, sex, and race and class politics. The sixteen contributors are entrenched—they are the video game creators themselves, media critics, and Internet celebrities. They share one thing: they are all players at heart, handpicked to form a superstar roster by Daniel Goldberg and Linus Larsson, the authors of the bestselling Minecraft: The Unlikely Tale of Markus "Notch" Persson and the Game that Changed Everything. The State of Play is essential reading for anyone interested in what may well be the defining form of cultural expression of our time. "If you want to explain to anyone why videogames are worth caring about, this is a single volume primer on where we are, how we got here and where we're going next. In every way, this is the state of play." —Kieron Gillen, author of The Wicked + the Divine, co-founder of Rock Paper Shotgun

Othello has a long history of provoking profound emotion in its audiences and readers. This 'freeze frame' volume showcases current debates and ideas about the play's provocative effects. Each chapter has been carefully selected for its originality and relevance to the needs of students, teachers, and researchers. Key issues and themes include: - Gender, Love, and Desire - Race, Ethnicity, and Difference - Social Relations, Status, and Ambition - Tragedy, Comedy, and Parody - Language, Expression, and Characterization All the essays offer new perspectives and combine to give readers an up-to-date understanding of what's exciting and challenging about Othello. The approach based on an individual play, unlike that of topic-based series, reflects how Shakespeare is most commonly studied and taught.

Robin Nelson's State of play up-dates and develops the arguments of his influential TV Drama In Transition (1997). It is equally distinctive in setting analusis of the aesethetics and compositional principles of texts within a broad conceptual framework (technologies, institutions, economics, cultural trends). Tracing "the great value shift from conduit to content" (Todreas, 1999), Nelson is relatively optimistic about the future quality of TV Drama in a global market-place. But, characteristically taking up questions of worth where others have avoided them, Nelson recognizes that certain types of "quality" are privileged for viewers able to pay, possibly at the expense of viewer preference worldwide for "local" resonances in television. The mix of arts and cultural studies methodologies makes for an unusual and insightful approach.

'For those of you missing your football fix, anything by Michael Calvin is worth a read – the hugely respected sports journalist writes eloquently about the modern game in page turner State of Play.' DAILY MIRROR _______________________________________________________ LONGLISTED FOR THE 2018 WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD Award-winning author of The Nowhere Men, Living on the Volcano and No Hunger in Paradise returns with his magnum opus on the state of modern football First he revealed the extraordinary lives of football scouts in The Nowhere Men. Next he unearthed the pressures on football managers in Living on the Volcano. Then he chronicled the hardships of young players striving to make it in No Hunger in Paradise. Now in State of Play, in what marks the pinnacle of a career investigating the human stories of football, award-winning writer Michael Calvin turns his eye to the biggest story of all - the game itself. From mental health to money, concussion to Champions league, fan-owners to oligarchs, women's football to world cups, Calvin gets under the skin of the beautiful game, and reveals why it is truly the game of our lives. Based on hundreds of hours of interviews with leading figures around the world, from Arsene Wenger to Steven Gerrard, Calvin reveals the winners, the losers, the politics, the pleasure, the hope, and the despair of the world's most popular sport.

The Merchant of Venice is one of Shakespeare's most controversial plays, whose elements resonate even more profoundly in the current climate of rising racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment, queerphobia and right-wing nationalism. This collection of essays offers a 'freeze frame' that showcases a range of current debates and ideas surrounding the play. Each chapter has been carefully selected for its originality and relevance to your needs. Essays offer new perspectives that provide an up-to-date understanding of what's exciting and challenging about the play. Key themes and topics include: · Race and religion · Gender and sexuality · Philosophy · Animal studies · Adaptations and performance history

The sixteenth edition of Social policy in the European Union: state of play has a triple ambition. First, it provides easily accessible information to a wide audience about recent developments in both EU and domestic social policymaking. Second, the volume provides a more analytical reading, embedding the key developments of the year 2014 in the most recent academic discourses. Third, the forward-looking perspective of the book aims to provide stakeholders and policymakers with specific tools that allow them to discern new opportunities to influence policymaking. In this 2015 edition of Social policy in the European Union: state of play, the authors tackle the topics of the state of EU politics after the parliamentary elections, the socialisation of the European Semester, methods of political protest, the Juncker investment plan, the EU’s contradictory education investment, the EU’s contested influence on national healthcare reforms, and the neoliberal Trojan Horse of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).