In this section, you can find an overview of my academic interests and links to the works that I have written that I find particularly interesting or noteworthy. Although this blog is mainly an outlet for creativity and film and video game criticism, I have decided to also give my academic voice an opportunity to come through here. For more, check out my Academia.edu page.

My main interests include…

• adaptation studies and medium-specific narrative possibilities
  • literature
  • film
  • video games
• transmedia storytelling
• character studies
  • villain studies

 Having majored in literary studies and theatre and media studies for my Bachelor’s degree, I combined these two tracks in the field of adaptation studies, with a focus on the rather unexplored area of villain characters. I am working on including video games in my theories as well, and for this reason I am currently working on analysing villains in video games specifically. During my Master’s studies, I started to depart a little bit from adaptation studies once I encountered the notion of transmedia storytelling. My Bachelor programme did not, at that point, require a formal Bachelor thesis, but rather an independent research project (IRP) or an Honour Thesis, which you can find below.

My Important Academic Works

• ‘Nothing is True’: The Different Functions of Haytham Kenway in the Assassin’s Creed Kenway Saga (2015)
  (Research Master’s Thesis)
• Staring Into Darkness: An Analytical Framework for Villains in Literary and Adaptation Studies (2014)
  • condensed version of Reading Over to the Dark Side and Unseeing Humanity presented at the Film & History Conference 2014
  • Conference PowerPoint Presentation

• Reading Over to the Dark Side: The Complexity of the Male Villain in Film and Literature (2011)
  (Independent Research Project)

• Unseeing Humanity: The Interaction between Spectator and Repellent Villain (2012)
  (Honour Thesis)
  (Note: as this was in parts an empirical research, it will still need to be reworked into an abridged version for confidentiality reasons. Please contact me for further information if interested.)

• Evil is a Point of View: The Interplay between Evil, Vampire Nature and Identity in Interview with the Vampire (2014)
• Coming Home: The Relationship between Narrative and Spatiality in Gone Home (2014)
• Reflections in a Fractured Mirror: Identity and Reality Construction in “Memento Mori” and Memento (2013)
• The Dark Side of a Genius: The Influence of German Expressionism on Tim Burton (2012)
• Playing with Reality: Method Acting in Theory and Practice (2010)

I’m happy to answer any kinds of questions or have discussions about my work, so go ahead if you have criticism, questions, comments, anything you want to say about the subject matter! Don’t hesitate to leave a comment or use this contact form to get in touch with me. You can also send an email to samantha (at) soulofstories.com!