Play the Knave is informed by extensive research in the fields of game studies, education, theater, and performance

Learn more by reading some of the research produced by our team. The publications on this page have informed Play the Knave's development and/or explore the game's educational and cultural impact.

Would you like to participate in our ongoing research?  We are currently conducting a research study into how digital gaming technology helps students understand Shakespeare and make connections between his plays and social justice concerns. Learn more by visiting our Classrooms page.

2021

• Gina Bloom and Lauren Bates, “Play to Learn: Shakespeare as Decolonial Praxis in South African Schools.” Shakespeare in Southern Africa 34 (2021): 7-22.
• Gina Bloom, Nicholas Toothman, and Evan Buswell, "Playful Pedagogy and Social Justice: Digital Embodiment in the Shakespeare Classroom." Shakespeare Survey, 74, special issue on Shakespeare and Education. 

​2019

• Gina Bloom, “Play the Knave.” In Learning, Education, and Games, Volume 3: 100 Games to Use in the Classroom and Beyond. Ed. Karen Schrier. ETC Press, Carnegie Mellon University.
• Gina Bloom,“Theater History in 3D: The Digital Early Modern in the Age of the Interface.” English Literary Renaissance, special issue on “The State of Renaissance Studies II,” 50.1 (2019): 8-16.

2018

• Gina Bloom, Gaming the Stage: Playable Media and the Rise of English Commercial Theater, Theater: History/Text/Performance series (University of Michigan Press).
• Colin Milburn, Respawn: Gamers, Hackers, and Technogenic Life, Experimental Futures (Duke University Press).

2017

• Sarah Asnaashari, Gina Bloom, and Amanda Shores. “Teaching Shakespeare through Performance in the 21st Century: Play the Knave in the English Language Arts Classroom.”

2016

• Gina Bloom, Sawyer Kemp, Nicholas Toothman, and Evan Buswell, “‘A Whole Theatre of Others’: Amateur Acting and Immersive Spectatorship in the Digital Shakespeare Game Play the Knave.” Shakespeare Quarterly, special issue on “#Bard,” ed. Douglas Lanier, 67.4, 408-430.

2015

• Gina Bloom. “Videogame Shakespeare: Enskilling Audiences through Theater-Making Games,” Shakespeare Studies 43, special forum on “Skill,” ed. Evelyn Tribble.
• Colin Milburn, Mondo Nano: Fun and Games in the World of Digital Matter (Duke University Press).

2014

• Michael Neff, “Lessons from the Arts: What the Performing Arts Literature Can Teach Us about Creating Expressive Character Movement,” in Nonverbal Communication in Virtual Worlds (ETC Press).

2013

• Gina Bloom, “Games,” in Early Modern Theatricality, Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature, Henry S. Turner, ed. (Oxford University Press).

2012

• Gina Bloom, “‘My Feet See Better Than My Eyes’: Spatial Mastery and the Game of Masculinity in Arden of Faversham’s Amphitheater,” in Theatre Survey 53.1.

2010

• Gina Bloom, “‘Boy Eternal’: Aging, Games, and Masculinity in The Winter’s Tale,” in English Literary Renaissance 40.3.
• Gina Bloom, “Manly Drunkenness: Binge Drinking as Disciplined Play,” in Masculinity and the Metropolis of Vice, 1550-1650, Amanda Bailey and Roze Hentschell, eds. (Palgrave).
• Colin Milburn,“Digital Matters: Video Games and the Cultural Transcoding of Nanotechnology,” in Governing Future Technologies: Nanotechnology and the Rise of an Assessment Regime, eds. Mario Kaiser, Monika Kurath, Sabine Maasen, and Christoph Rehmann-Stuuer (Springer).

2008

• Colin Milburn, “Atoms and Avatars: Virtual Worlds as Massively Multiplayer Laboratories,” Spontaneous Generations 2.