Being Dragonborn: Critical Essays on the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Paperback

by Mike Piero (Editor), Marc A. Ouellette (Editor)

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is one of the bestselling and most influential video games of the past decade. From the return of world-threatening dragons to an ongoing civil war, the province of Skyrim is rich with adventure, lore, magic, history, and stunning vistas. Beyond its visual spectacle alone, Skyrim is an exemplary gameworld that reproduces out-of-game realities, controversies, and histories for its players. Being Dragonborn, then, comes to signify a host of ethical and ideological choices for the player, both inside and outside the gameworld. These essays show how playing Skyrim, in many ways, is akin to "playing" 21st century America with its various crises, conflicts, divisions, and inequalities. Topics covered include racial inequality and white supremacy, gender construction and misogyny, the politics of modding, rhetorics of gameplay, and narrative features.

Author Biography

Mike Piero is a Professor of English at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Ohio. Marc A. Ouellette is an award-winning educator who teaches cultural and gender studies at Old Dominion University, where he is the Learning Games Initiative Research Fellow. Series editor Matthew Wilhelm Kapell teaches American studies, anthropology, and writing at Pace University in New York.