Call for proposals for Routledge Series: Folklore and Mythology in Games and Interactive Media

Aims and Scope:

This series focuses on research monographs and edited collections that highlight folklore and intangible cultural heritage in games and interactive media, considering the role of expressive culture in diverse digital media domains including but not limited to video games, websites, mobile apps, immersive platforms, and interactive narrative. The series is especially interested in research exploring the role of folkloric figures, folklore archetypes and motifs, and place-based folk groups and folklife in video games and interactive media. Contributions to this series could be organized around one or more of these aspects of folklore in a way that brings together the insights of folkloristics with that of related fields including video game studies, digital and interactive media studies, and cultural studies.

Natalie Underberg-Goode holds a Ph.D. in Folklore from Indiana University, Bloomington, and is Professor in the Games and Interactive Media program at the University of Central Florida. She is the author of Multiplicity and Cultural Representation in Transmedia Storytelling (2023), co-author of Digital Ethnography: Anthropology, Narrative, and New Media (2013), and co-editor of Exploring Digital Ethnography: From Principles to Practice (2025). She is the former electronic media featured and reviewed projects editor for the Journal of American Folklore as well as former chair of the Florida Folklife Council.

Call For Proposals:

I am currently soliciting proposals for consideration. Topics may consider, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Folkloric figures in contemporary video games and interactive media;
• The transmedia adaptation of folktales, legends, and myths;
• The role of folk belief in video games and interactive media;
• The role of intangible cultural heritage in the development of a country’s (or countries’) game market(s);
• Comparing the use and adaptation of real-world folklore and intangible cultural heritage for primarily commercial/entertainment-based purposes versus for informal education or advocacy aims; and
• How games and interactive media, broadly conceived, give rise to new forms of folklore and/or folk group practices.

Please send initial expressions of interest in proposing a title for this series to Natalie Underberg-Goode (Natalie.Underberg-Goode@ucf.edu).