Matthew Wilhelm Kapell is a historian and anthropologist, with master's degrees in each discipline, who has a Ph.D. in American Studies.
Early in his career he co-authored chapters on the genetics of human growth and the effects of poverty on growth. The majority of this work appeared while he taught anthropology at the University of Michigan–Dearborn. Included among these are essays published mainly in edited European and Indian (Asia) works attacking ideas of genetic factors in determining development of height and body shape. Other publications include works on the computer game Civilization, Holocaustal images in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the American speculative fiction and socialist writer Mack Reynolds re-working of the Utopian fiction of Edward Bellamy, and Christian Romance fiction.
Kapell has also published a number of essays in the journal Extrapolation, and elsewhere, on speculative fiction in the United States as intellectual history. His work in history is mainly focused American frontier ideology in the contemporary period, though he has also published on the representation of race in the Detroit media during World War II and the legal history of British colonial marriage law in Africa.
Kapell was educated at Schoolcraft College, The University of Michigan–Dearborn, Wayne State University, all in Michigan, United States, and at Swansea University, Wales, UK.
He is best known for his work in media studies and frontier ideology in American history.
Kapell's book Exploring the Next Frontier: Vietnam, NASA, Star Trek and Utopia in 1960s and 1970s American Myth and History, from the academic publisher Routledge, examines notions of the frontier in American culture during the 1960s and 1970s. It specifically covers the American cultural reactions to the Vietnam War through the work novelist of Joe Haldeman, the NASA lunar missions, the television show Star Trek and Gerard K. O'Neill's concept of space colonization called the "High Frontier."
He has published four edited academic volumes on popular culture, film, and television. The first, (with William G. Doty) is Jacking In to the Matrix Franchise: Cultural Reception and Interpretation (2004). The second is (with John Shelton Lawrence) Finding the Force of the Star Wars Franchise: Fans, Merchandise, and Critics [1] (2006) and adds Wilhelm to his name. In 2010 Kapell published Star Trek as Myth: Essays on Symbol and Archetype at the Final Frontier [2] and, working with British scholar Stephen McVeigh, Kapell edited The Films of James Cameron: Critical Essays in 2011. [3] In 2015, with Ace G. Pilkington, Kapell edited The Fantastic Made Visible: Essays on the Adaption of Science Fiction and Fantasy From Page to Screen [4] examining works by authors such as William Shakespeare, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein and franchises such as Planet of the Apes and Snow White. All of the volumes provide multiple essays by academics and others on different cultural interpretations on the films and franchises under examination while Kapell's conclusion essays tend to emphasize myth.
Kapell's 2013 edited book, Playing with the Past: Digital Games and the Simulation of History [5] (Co-edited with Andrew B.R. Elliott; Bloomsbury) was called a “groundbreaking work in Media Studies and an essential text for the study of video games and the history of ideas” by C. Jason Smith in a pre-publication blurb. An examination of multiple digital (computer and console) games that confront historical narratives it contains chapters on Ancient, contemporary, Western and non-Western history, and utopian futures. It also examines different theories of historiographical understanding from multiple perspectives. His 2015 book, edited alone, is The Play Versus Story Divide in Game Studies: Critical Essays. [6] It examines the debate in Game Studies around ludology and narratology as paradigms for examining digital games.
A utopia typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or near-perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, which describes a fictional island society in the New World.
The canon of a work of fiction is "the body of works taking place in a particular fictional world that are widely considered to be official or authoritative; [especially] those created by the original author or developer of the world". Canon is contrasted with, or used as the basis for, works of fan fiction and other derivative works.
"Kir'Shara" is the ninth episode of the fourth season of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: Enterprise. It was writer Michael Sussman's third episode of the season, while it was director David Livingston's second. The episode was the third in a three-part story arc, following on from the episodes "The Forge" and "Awakening". The title "Kir'Shara" refers to a Vulcan religious relic, and the three part Vulcan story arc explored themes relating to the Protestant Reformation resulting in comparisons to books such as The Da Vinci Code and The Celestine Prophecy, while the Kir'Shara itself was compared to the Nag Hammadi library.
John Shelton Lawrence is an emeritus professor of philosophy at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa, United States. His initial major publication, The American Monomyth, written with Robert Jewett, was published in 1977.
Russell Blackford is an Australian writer, philosopher, and literary critic.
Space Western is a subgenre of science fiction that uses the themes and tropes of Westerns within science-fiction stories in an outer space setting. Subtle influences may include exploration of new, lawless frontiers, while more overt influences may feature actual cowboys in outer space who use rayguns and ride robotic horses. Although initially popular, a strong backlash against perceived hack writing caused the genre to become a subtler influence until the 1980s, when it regained popularity. A further critical reappraisal occurred during the 2000s due to critical acclaim for Firefly.
Daphne Patai is an American scholar and author. She is professor emeritus of the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her PhD is in Brazilian literature, but her early work also focused on utopian and dystopian fiction. She is the daughter of the anthropologist Raphael Patai.
Science fiction studies is the common name for the academic discipline that studies and researches the history, culture, and works of science fiction and, more broadly, speculative fiction.
Star Trek and Star Wars are American media franchises which present alternative scenarios of space adventure. The two franchises proliferate in this setting of storytelling, and each has offered various forms of media productions for decades. Each franchise comprises billions of dollars of intellectual property, employment for thousands, and entertainment for many more.
Star Trek is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the eponymous 1960s television series and became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. Since its creation, the franchise has expanded into various films, television series, video games, novels, and comic books, and it has become one of the most recognizable and highest-grossing media franchises of all time.
Claude J. Summers is an American literary scholar, and the William E. Stirton Professor Emeritus in the Humanities and Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. A native of Galvez, Louisiana, he was the third child of Burg Martin Summers and Theo Coy Causey. He was educated in the public schools of Ascension Parish, graduating from Gonzales High School in 1962. He has long credited two teachers at Gonzales High School—Diana Sevario Welch and Sherry Rushing—for inspiring his interest in academic achievement.
Alan N. Shapiro is an American science fiction and media theorist. He is a lecturer and essayist in the fields of science fiction studies, media theory, posthumanism, French philosophy, creative coding, technological art, sociology of culture, social choreography, software theory, robotics, artificial intelligence, and futuristic and transdisciplinary design. Shapiro's book and other published writings on Star Trek have contributed to a change in public perception about the importance of Star Trek for contemporary culture. His published essays on Jean Baudrillard - especially in the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies - have contributed to a change in public perception about the importance of Baudrillard's work for culture, philosophy, sociology, and design.
William G. Doty (1939–2017) was an American religious studies scholar and educator. He is an author and editor known for his writings about myth and mythology.
Phillip E. Wegner is a professor in the Department of English and the Marston-Milbauer Eminent Scholar in English at the University of Florida.
Star Trek Lives! is a 1975 book, co-written by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Sondra Marshak, and Joan Winston, which explored the relationship between the Star Trek television series and the fandom that emerged following the series' cancellation. It was published by Bantam Books.
Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture is a nonfiction book of academic scholarship written in 1992 by television and media studies scholar Henry Jenkins. Textual Poachers explores fan culture and examines fans' social and cultural impacts.
Francesca Coppa is an American scholar whose research has encompassed British drama, performance studies and fan studies. In English literature, she is known for her work on the British writer Joe Orton; she edited several of his early novels and plays for their first publication in 1998–99, more than thirty years after his murder, and compiled an essay collection, Joe Orton: A Casebook (2003). She has also published on Oscar Wilde. In the fan-studies field, Coppa is known for documenting the history of media fandom and, in particular, of fanvids, a type of fan-made video. She co-founded the Organization for Transformative Works in 2007, originated the idea of interpreting fan fiction as performance, and in 2017, published the first collection of fan fiction designed for teaching purposes. As of 2021, Coppa is a professor of English at Muhlenberg College, Pennsylvania.
Fan studies is an academic discipline that analyses fans, fandoms, fan cultures and fan activities, including fanworks. It is an interdisciplinary field located at the intersection of the humanities and social sciences, which emerged in the early 1990s as a separate discipline, and draws particularly on audience studies and cultural studies.