Over the next nine months we will be hosting a series of Pop Up events in the lead up to our third installment of the Realizing Resistance conference trilogy: Realizing Resistance III: The Expanding Universe.
Book Launch! Chris Kempshall’s The History and Politics of Star Wars: Death Stars and Democracy
August 13, 2022, 1:00 p.m. Central (US)
Dr. Sam Langsdale, the creator of Realizing Resistance, hosted this conversation with author Dr. Chris Kempshall about his new book, The History and Politics of Star Wars: Death Stars and Democracy (Routledge, 2022).
“This book provides the first detailed and comprehensive examination of all the materials making up the Star Wars franchise relating to the portrayal and representation of real-world history and politics. Drawing on a variety of sources, including films, published interviews with directors and actors, novels, comics, and computer games, this volume explores the ways in which historical and contemporary events have been repurposed within Star Wars.”
Chris Kempshall is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Exeter and a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Army Leadership, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He is a historian of the First World War as well as popular representations of history in modern media. He has authored numerous academic works, including The First World War in Computer Games (2015) and British, French and American Relations on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (2018).
Interview! Dr. Justin Wigard talks with pop culture author and publisher Stu Horvath about 1980s & 1990s Star Wars role-playing games
October 28, 2022
Welcome to the second event in a series of Pop Ups leading up to our third installment of the Realizing Resistance conference trilogy: Realizing Resistance III: The Expanding Universe — A podcast interview with Stu Horvath about vintage Star Wars RPGs, conducted by Justin Wigard.
This interview focuses on the 1980s & 1990s Star Wars role-playing games published by West End Games. We take a deep dive into what makes those games tick, where they fit into the larger history of Star Wars, what makes them so influential, and how they foster modes of rebellious and resistant gameplay. No prior RPG experience required!
Stu Horvath is the founder and publisher of Unwinnable, an incredible independent popular culture criticism magazine. He’s also author of the forthcoming book from MIT Press in 2023, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground: A Guide to Tabletop Roleplaying Games from D&D to Mothership, a decade-by-decade examination of the evolution of tabletop roleplaying games, from the 1974 release of Dungeons and Dragons through the present day. Last and certainly not least, Stu is the co-host of the Vintage RPG Podcast with John McGuire, and he posts every day about vintage RPGs on Instagram @vintagerpg and at https://www.vintagerpg.com/
Justin Wigard is the postdoctoral fellow in the Distant Viewing Lab at University of Richmond where he studies comics, games, bad syfy films, and digital humanities. He can be reached on twitter @JustinWigard and you can find more of his work at https://justinwigard.com/
Relevant Links:
Star Wars West End Games:
http://www.starwarstimeline.net/Westendgames.htm
SWTRPG 30th Anniversary Edition info:
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/star-wars-the-roleplaying-game-30th-anniversary-edition/
SWTRPG: Galaxy Guide 13, Rogue One:
https://www.erictrautmann.us/2017/02/08/i-am-one-with-the-force-the-force-is-with-me
SWTRPG: Darth Vader & Ming the Merciless: https://64.media.tumblr.com/7d4dee0a21a49fbb32a61c97a00b4b11/tumblr_p5gfpvNLcF1wo6q1so7_1280.jpg
Season 3 of The Mandalorian Tweet-Along!
Everyone’s favorite green baby is back with his dad for more space adventures and we’re here for it! Join us each week in March to watch the newest episodes of The Mandalorian on Disney+. We’ve got jokes, insights, scholarly thoughts, and gobs of adoration for the best baby Mando this side of the galaxy.
Using the Force of FanFic: A Workshop
Sat, April 29, 2023, 2:00 PM – 4:30 PM CDT
Are you curious about fanfiction? Ever wished you could rewrite a line (or scene, or trilogy)? Are you sure that you could have wrapped up a plot-hole perfectly, if given the chance? Give fanfiction a try! In this 2.5 hour workshop (with breaks), you’ll have an opportunity to learn about what fanfiction is, how it’s related to the Star Wars universe, and how you can get started writing fanfic of your own. Register now!
In this 2.5 hour workshop (with breaks), you’ll have an opportunity to learn about what fanfiction is, how it’s related to the Star Wars universe, and how you can get started writing fanfic of your own. We’ll do some writing and sharing exercises together and talk about how you might work from concepts and characters to developing a story, scene, or dialogue to bring them to life. We’ll also spend some time talking about how you can develop a writing plan, find a community, and choose platforms for sharing your work.
This pop-up workshop will be the last free online event leading up to this year’s conference Realizing Resistance Episode III: The Expanding Universe!
Facilitator Bios
Cait Coker is an Associate Professor and Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Much of her research looks at the intersection of genre, gender, and publishing history, and her articles have appeared in Transformative Works and Cultures, The Journal of Fandom Studies, and The Seventeenth Century, among others. In 2017 with Karen Viars she published “Welcoming the Dark Side?: Exploring Whitelash and Actual Space Nazis in TFA Fanfiction” in New American Notes Online (NANO).
Deborah Yun Caldwell is the Data Services Librarian at the University of North Texas. Her professional interests lie in exploring the intersections of intellectual freedom, privacy, data, cultural memory, and the justice of information access. Deborah is a long-time and enthusiastic participant of collaborative storytelling and transformative fandom culture, and has contributed to fanfic, fandom zines, podfics, and more.
John Edward Martin is the Director of Scholarly Communication at the University of North Texas Libraries, a Board member of the Digital Cultural Studies Cooperative, and organizer of the Comics Studies at UNT community. He has been on the program committee for all three Realizing Resistance conferences as well as the Flyover Comics Symposium. At the first RR, he delivered a paper on “Han, Finn, and the Reluctant Resistance”, and most recently joined the VoxPopcast (e246) to talk about Andor and the seeds of resistance. He is a long-time Star Wars fan and a short fiction writer, but a novice fanfic writer who’s excited to learn from the Star Wars community.