Sex and the Cinema Wallflower Press, 2006
From the sanctioned to the forbidden, the suggestive to the blatant, evocations of sex have saturated cinema with a heady distillation of fleshly passions. Whether laced in the rapturous rhetorics of romance or seeking to pack a harder erotic punch, cinematic representations of sex and sexual desire have provided cinema with one of its major attractions. Sex and the Cinema traces the numerous factors and contexts - artistic, institutional, political and socio-cultural - that have shaped the way that sex appears in film. How does cinema mediate sex? Why is sex presented often in transgressive terms? What ideals and values inform cinematic depictions of sex? Given that cinematic representations of sex have perhaps caused more controversy than any others, Sex and the Cinema charts the cultural norms and contestations that are often diversely in play. Formal conventions used to represent sex and desire in cinema, as well as themes such as adultery, incest, romance, sado-masochism and 'real' sex are explored. Films discussed include Don't Look Now, Broken Blossoms, Emmanuelle, Secretary, Close My Eyes, Eyes Wide Shut, Ginger Snaps, Frenchman's Creek, Baise Moi, Romance, The Story of O, Zandalee, Way Down East, Red Dust, The War Zone and Oedipus Rex.

''Sex and the Cinema provides a lucid overview of some of world cinema's most sensational terrain. Krzywinska's crisply-argued, lively readings illuminate her difficult and shady material, both theoretical and cinematic. This book is set to become an indispensable reference-point for the student and scholar, as well as an inspiring and informative map for the general reader.' Linda Ruth Williams, University of Southampton, UK 'A sober, readable, informative and clear presentation of that most elusive and sensational of topics: sex and movies. Organised around formal and narrative conventions in the first part and 'themes of transgression' in the second, Krzywinska broadly covers the major films with important sexual themes, especially of the last thirty years.' Linda Williams, University of California, Berkeley

Tomb Raiders and Space Invaders: Videogame forms and contexts.Co-author with Geoff King. IB Tauris, 2006. The first in the field to focus on the key aspects of videogames themselves as a distinctive medium, this is a rich and original read for gamers as well as students and researchers of popular culture internationally, which reviews the passionate gamer/game relationship viz all types of games from Doom to EverQuest. Videogames now rival Hollywood cinema in popularity and profits and there are huge followings for titles such as Tomb Raider or The Sims. Exactly what games offer, however, as a distinct form of entertainment, has received scant attention. This book is a valuable contribution to this new field. Its main focus is on key formal aspects of games and the experiences and pleasures offered by the activities they require of the player. A wide range of games are considered, from first-person shooters to third-person action-adventures, strategy, sports-related and role-playing games. Issues examined in detail include the characteristics of gameplay and its relationship with narrative, genre, virtual landscapes, realism, spectacle and sensation. Lively and accessible in style, this book is written for both an academic readership and the wider audience of gamers and those interested in popular culture.

ScreenPlay: cinema/videogames/interfaces. Co-editor, with Geoff King. Wallflower Press/Columbia University Press, 2002. Addresses from a number of different perspectives the relationship between cinema and videogames. Games often depend on recognized film genres, milieu or devices for branding and marketing. But games also offer markedly different experiences, especially in the realm of "interactivity." But what happens in the interface between cinema and games console or PC? Is there a merging of languages as games influence movies and movies influence games? Are some films becoming increasingly like games, and to what extent do they draw on the characteristics of Hollywood or other forms of cinema? ScreenPlay investigates all these issues and explores the extent to which the tools of film analysis can be applied to games, in particular, how the pleasures (and frustrations) of computer games can be compared with those of cinema.

Science Fiction Cinema: From Outerspace to Cyberspace (co-authored with Geoff King). (Wallflower Press, 2000). Outlines the major themes of the genre, from representations of the mad scientist and computer hacker to the relationship between science fiction and postmodernism, exploring issues such as the meaning of special effects and the influence of science fiction cinema on the entertainment media of the digital age. A Skin for Dancing In: Witchcraft, Possession and Voodoo in Film. (Flicks Books 2000). The cinema of the occult celebrates the irrational and the magical. It offers powerful and seductive narratives of desire, transgression and fantasy. Why are magic and demonology such attractive subjects for filmmakers? Is the cinema of the occult an expression of a need for the experience of the sacred? What binds cinema to the depiction of magic? What meanings are invested in demons, witches, possessed nuns and voodoo priests? The book draws on the work of Aleister Crowley, JG Frazer, Sigmund Freud and Georges Bataille, and places the cinema of the occult within the contexts of ancient Greek culture, Medievalism and the modern 'magical revival'. There are close textual studies of films from diverse genres, including The Devils, Lost Highway, Angel Heart, The Wicker Man, Häxan, Black Narcissus, Twin Peaks, Videodrome and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, as well as the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Videogame/player/text (MUP 2008) examines the playing and playful subject through a series of analytical essays focused on particular videogames and playing experience. With essays from a range of internationally renowned game scholars, the major aim of this collection is to show how it is that videogames communicate their meanings and provide their pleasures. Each essay focuses on specific examples of gameplay dynamics to tease out the specificities of videogames as a new form of interaction between text and digital technology for the purposes of entertainment. One important theme explored by the volume is the manifold modes of engagement that players have with the videogame text, which enable the playing subject to be constructed in many different ways. Online play, clan membership, competitive or co-operative play, player modification of game texts, and the solo play of a single player are each addressed through the individual analyses of the gameplay experiences produced by, for example, The Sims, Grand Theft Auto, Prince of Persia, Doom, Quake, World of Warcraft, StreetFighter and Civilisation.

‘World Creation and Lore: World of Warcraft as Rich Text’ in Hidle G. Corneluissen and Jill Walker Rettberg (eds.) Digital Culture, Play and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader . The MiT Press, 2008.

 
‘Being a Determined Agent in (the) World of Warcraft: text/player/identity’ in Atkins and Krzywinska (eds.) videogame/player/text. MUP, 2007.

'Zombies in Gamespace: form, context and meaning in zombie-based videogames' in Shawn McIntosh and Marc leverette (eds.) Zombie Culture: Autopsies of the Living Dead. Scarecrow Press, 2008.

 
'Lurking Beneath the Skin: Identity, Magic and The English Pagan Landscape in the Popular Imagination' Robert Fish (ed.) Cinematic Countrysides. Manchester University Press, 2008.

 
‘Blood Scythes, Festivals, Quests and BackStories: World Creation and Rhetorics of Myth in World of Warcraft’ in Games and Culture. 1. 2006.

 
'Film Studies and Video Games' (co-authored with Geoff King) (Sage). Ed Jo Bryce and Jason Rutter. Introducing Digital Game Studies. Polity Press, 2006.

 
'The Enigma of the Real: The qualifications for Real Sex in Contemporary Art Cinema ' The Spectacle of the Real (ed Geoff King) contract secured with Intellect Books (2004). 'Stalker' (entry for Science Fiction section) in Steven Schneider (ed) Understanding Genres. McGraw Hill, 2003.

 
'Computer games/cinema/interfaces' (co-authored with Geoff King) Frans Mayra (ed) CGDC Conference Proceedings University of Tampere 2002.

 
'Hands-On Horror' in Krzywinska and King (eds) ScreenPlay: cinema/videogames/interfaces. Wallflower Press/Columbia University Press. 2002.

 
'Hubble Bubble, Herbs and Grimoires: Practical Magic and Witchcraft in Buffy the Vampire Slayer' in David Lavery and Rhonda Wilcox (eds.) Fighting the Forces: Essays on the Meanings of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (Rowman and Littlefield 2001).

 
'Demon Daddies: Gender, Ecstasy and Terror in the Possession film' in Alain Silver and James Ursini (eds.) The Horror Reader. ( New York : Limelight Editions, 2000).

 
'Memory, Mourning and History in Margarethe von Trotta's Rosa Luxemburg' Claire Tylee & Rose Atfield (ed.), Women, Drama and The Great War (Mellen Press, 2000)

 
'The Dynamics of Squirting' in Graeme Harpe r & Xavier Mendik (eds.), Unruly Pleasures: Cult Cinema and Its Critics (FAB Press, 2000). 'Cicciolina: Transgression and Abjection in Explicit Sex films' in Michele Aaron (ed), The Body's Perilous Pleasures. (Edinburgh University Press, 1999).

 
'Dissidence and Authenticity in Dyke Porn and Actuality TV' in Mike Wayne (ed), Dissident Voices: The Politics of Television and Cultural Change (London: Pluto Press, 1998).

 
'Le Belle Dame Sans Merci'. Paul Burston & Colin Richardson (eds), A Queer Romance (London: Routledge, 1995).

In Press
‘Arachne versus Minerva: Long Narrative in World of Warcraft and Buffy the Vampire Slayer - from Epic to Epixx’ in Third Person, The MiT Press.

 
With Douglas Brown Adaptation and Convergence: What’s at Stake When Movies become Videogames and VideoGames become Movies? in Warren Buckland Film Theory Goes to the Movies II. AFI.

 
With Esther MacCallum-Stewart Science Fiction & Videogames in Science Fiction Encyclopedia. Routledge.

‘Demon Power Girls: regimes of form and force in videogames Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Primal’ Intersections Autumn 2005. www.intersection.co.nz/Print_Articles/ Krzywinska/krzywinska_demongirlpower.doc

'Transgression, Transformation, Titillation: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders - a fantastic fairytale' Pre-published at http://www.kinoeye.org/ (and published in the e-journal Kinoeye August 2003) commissioned by Steven Schneider, Harvard University.

'Playing Buffy: Remediation, Occulted Meta-game-physics and the dynamics of agency in the videogame version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer' Slayage: the Online Journal for Buffy Studies. No. 8. http://www.slayage.tv/essays/slayage8/Krzywinska.htm

'Hands-On Horror' Axes to Grind: Re-Imagining the Horrific in Visual Media and Culture, Harmony Wu, editor, Special Issue of Spectator 22:2 (Spring 2003) 12-23.

'The Comedy of Explicit Sex Films'. Tendens: Tidsskrift for Kultursociologi Dec 1994 University of Copenhagen. Translated by Thomas Wulff.

'Masquerading the Phallus: Laughter and the Phallus/penis analogue in Explicit Sex Films' Diatribe Issue 8 Aut/Winter 1998.

’Valerie and her Week of Wonders’ in Steven Schneider (ed). Screen Guides: 100 European Horror Films, BFI publishing (in press).

Schirmer Guide to Film. Entry on videogames. 2006. (in press)

Contemporary North American Directors (Wallflower Press, 2001) [Coen Brothers, Terry Gilliam].

Contemporary British Directors (Wallflower Press, 2001) [John Boorman].

The Movie Book (Phaidon, 2000) entries include: Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Christopher Lee, Terence Fisher, William Friedkin, Karloff, Lugosi, Vincent Price, Todd Browning, Sissy Spacek.

McLeish K. (ed), Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought (London: Bloomsbury, 1993). 30 entries on concepts and theories within Feminist Thought.

Vice President of Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) www.digra.org

Games and Culture (Sage)

Game Studieswww.gamestudies.org Peer-reviewed, scholarly journal on computer games. Articles focus on aesthetic, cultural and communicative aspects of computer games.

Main editor of ‘Hard-core’ monthly column for DiGRA/IGDA website. Forum for discussion on what constitutes ‘core’ to Games Studies. From 2002-2005.

Slayage (academic e-journal based in the US Dealing with the cult TV programme Buffy the Vampire Slayer) http://www.slayage.tv 2001-present.

Intersections.2004-present.