Journal for Religion, Film and Media
Chief editors
Stefanie Knauss, Villanova University
Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati, University of Munich
Christian Wessely, University of Graz
The Journal for Religion, Film and Media is a peer-reviewed, open access, online publication. It offers a platform for scholarly research in the broad field of religion and media, with a particular interest in audio-visual and interactive forms of communication. It engages with the challenges arising from the dynamic development of media technologies and their interaction with religion in an interdisciplinary key. It is published twice a year, in May and November.
JRFM is edited by a network of international experts in film, media and religion with professional experience in interdisciplinary research, teaching and publishing, linking perspectives from the study of religion and theology, film, media, visual and cultural studies, and sociology. It is published in cooperation between different institutions in Europe and the USA, particularly the University of Graz, the University of Munich and Villanova University, in cooperation with the Schüren publishing house in Marburg. JRFM is published also as a print-on-demand.
Heft 9.1 ab 15. Mai online!
Paradise Lost. Presentations of Nostalgic Longing in Digital Games
Since Milton's poem, the notion of "Paradise Lost" (1667) has found its way into popular culture in general and digital games specifcially. While digital games have been an arena to imagine the past since their early days, in the past decade, there has been a surge in retro-gaming as a kind of narratological, ludological, visual, and technological longing for the early days of gaming, prime examples being CUPHEAD, CELESTE or UNDERTALE. Linked to such a longing for the early days of gaming is an emergence of various remakes of old-school classics, like ODDWORLD: ABE’S EXODDUS as ODDWORLD: SOULSTORM. Yet other games explicitly and deliberately employ and reflect on the idea of a rupture in human history; that is, the loss of an earlier (potentially utopian) state one strongly longs for but is beyond reach, like HORIZON ZERO DAWN. Articles in this issue reflect on and discuss the various phenomena in digital gaming that play with and cater to an idealized, romanticized, and glorified past, a more innocent time in human history.
Das Journal for Religion, Film and Media kann unter www.jrfm.eu heruntergeladen oder beim Schüren Verlag als Print bestellt werden.