Tess Dunbar

Tess Dunbar

Higher Degree by Research Candidate

School of Humanities

Faculty of Arts, Business, Law and Economics


I am a PhD student working jointly in the Department of History and Department of Media. My research is on medievalism in video games and I work broadly in the fields of Historical Game Studies and Medieval History.

My PhD research is on the representation of the gendered figure of the witch in medievalist computer role-play games. My case studies focus on the mobilisation of cultural historical imagination around gendered magic and witchcraft in the construction of fantasy medievalist worlds in CPRGs. I am interested in the representation of witches in video games in historical context, compared to other strains of representation, such as film, and with broader cultural movements around the idea of witchcraft both historically and in the present. This is interdisciplinary research that contributes most significantly to historical game studies and medievalism, but intersects with a range of other fields of study.

My Masters of Research thesis presented a historical analysis of the 1991 Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves video game, interpreting the differences between the game and film in the context of Gulf War America, largely regarding technology, gender, and race.

  • Journals

    Year Citation
    2023 Watterson, T. (2023). ‘Now <i>you</i> are <i>Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves</i>™’: Intermedial Medievalism. Adaptation, 16(1), 50-62.
    DOI
    2022 Watterson, T. (2022). Medieval Stories and Storytelling: Multimedia and Multi-Temporal Perspectives. PARERGON, 39(1), 269-271.
    DOI
    2022 Watterson, T., & Roberts, Z. (2022). Seeing the unseen: <i>INVISIBILITY</i> at MOD.. History Australia, 19(3), 1-4.
    DOI
  • Book Chapters

    Year Citation
    2022 Watterson, T. (2022). “Make him a woman:” Gender and witches in Darklands. In Women in Historical and Archaeological Video Games (pp. 243-268). De Gruyter.
    DOI
  • Conference Papers

    Year Citation
    2021 di Carpegna Falconieri, T., Savy, P., & Yawn, L. (Eds.) (2021). Middle Ages without borders: a conversation on medievalism. In . Publications de l’École française de Rome.
    DOI
    2021 Watterson, T. (2021). "Everyone Knows Witches are Barren": Images of Fertility, Witchcraft and Womanhood in Medievalist Video Games. In R. Houghton (Ed.), The Middle Ages In Modern Games: Conference Proceedings, Vol. 2 (pp. 15). Twitter: The Public Medievalist; Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Research, University of Winchester.

Tutor for HIST3037: Early Modern Europe - Semester 2, 2021

Tutor for HIST2053: Medieval Europe: Crusades to the Black Death - Semester 1, 2021

Guest Lecturer for MDIA2221: Digital Games, Cultures and Technologies, Semester 1, 2020

 

At Macquarie University

Convenor and Tutor for MHIS2007 - From Charlemagne to Game of Thrones: The Middle Ages Then and Now at Macquarie University - Semester 2, 2020

Marker for MHIS/MHIX1001: Religion, Trade, and Empire in the Pre-Modern World, 1215-1788 - Semester 1, 2020

Marker for MHIS120: Making the Middle Ages: Faith, War and Romance, Semester 1, 2019


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