From prime-time television shows and graphic novels to the development of computer game expansion packs, the recent explosion of popular serials has provoked renewed interest in the history and economics of serialization, as well as the impact of this cultural form on readers, viewers, and gamers. In this volume, contributors—literary scholars, media theorists, and specialists in comics, graphic novels, and digital culture—examine the economic, narratological, and social effects of serials from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century and offer some predictions of where the form will go from here.
Foreword Christoph Lindner Introduction Rob Allen and Thijs van den Berg Part I: Victorian Serials 1. The Unruliness of Serials in the Nineteenth Century (and in the Digital Age) Mark Turner 2. "Pause you who read this": Disruption and the Victorian Serial Novel Rob Allen 3. "Split […] peas": Mrs Beeton and Domestic Time, Decomposed Maria Damkjaer Part II: Serialization on Screen 4. The Logic of the Line Segment: Continuity and Discontinuity in the Serial-Queen Melodrama Shane Denson 5. "Is it true blondes have more fun?": Mad Men and the Mechanics of Serialization Joyce Goggin 6. The Walking Dead: Quality Television, Transmedia Serialization, and Zombies Dan Hassler-Forest 7. Ingmar Bergman, Showrunner Sean O’Sullivan Part III: Serialization in Comic Books and Graphic Novels 8. Serialization and Displacement in Graphic Narrative Jason Dittmer 9. The Issues Issue: A Series of Thoughts on Seriality in Daniel Clowes’ Eightball Angela Szczepaniak Part IV: Digital Serialization 10. The Sense of an Ending: The Computer Game Fallout 3 as a Serial Fiction Alistair Brown 11. Circling the Infinite Loop, One Edit at a Time: Seriality in Wikipedia and the Encyclopedic Urge Erinç Salor 12. The Serialization Game: Computer Hardware and the Serial Production of Video Games Thijs van den Berg
Biography
Rob Allen is a lecturer in the Department of English Language and Culture at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Thijs van den Berg is a lecturer in the Department of English Language and Culture at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
"This collection presents an ambitious and original intervention in the field of seriality studies. It captures the workings of serialization as a core principle of modernity by taking stock of a wide range of medial formats and narrative and non-narrative configurations from the nineteenth century to the present time." -- Ruth Mayer, University of Hanover, Germany
