Brett Nicholls
BA (Hons) PhD (Murd)
Senior Lecturer

Office - Richardson 6C18
Tel 64 3 479 8819
Email brett.nicholls@otago.ac.nz

Research interests

I have recently been working on the problem of communication, control and politics, looking at computer games as a new(ish) form of communication, digitally produced conspiracy theory, and recent shifts in television culture for some ideas on this problem. My basic position is that the contemporary problem of control shifts the terrain of politics (as set out in communication and cultural studies) away from ideology critique to politics as biopolitics. The coordinates for this have been thinkers such as Agamben, Berardi, Virno, Hardt and Negri and the debates that have emerged in relation to their work. Ranciere’s counter to, what has become known as, “autonomist Marxism” is of much interest. This work, for me at least, seems to provide the most important insight on the problem of communication, control, and politics today.

Papers taught 2011

MFCO 217 Television Studies
MFCO 102 Understanding Contemporary Media
MFCO 315 Digital Media and Society

Publications

Nicholls, B. "East West 101 as edgy text: Television police drama and Australian multiculturalism". Continuum. Vol. 25, No. 4, 2011: 573-582

Nicholls, B. "Hardt, Negri and antagonism: Media and communication studies in the context of Empire". Journal of Communication Inquiry, published online 21 July 2011, http://jci.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/06/27/0196859911415674

Nicholls, B. and Barrat, A. “The Kumars at No. 42: The dynamics of Hyphenation or Did Parkie Take Sanjeev Down?” In Cultural Transformations: Perspectives on Translocation in a Global Age. eds.Vijay Devadas, Henry Johnson and Chris Prentice. Pp. 275-306. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2010. ISBN 9789042030039.

Nicholls, B. and Ryan, S. C. “Gameplay as Thirdspace”. In The pleasures of computer gaming: essays on cultural history, theory and aesthetics. ed. Melanie Swawell and Jason Wilson, pp. 167-190. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2008. ISBN 9780786435951.

Nicholls, B. “The ludic integration of the game and film industries: The Lord of the Rings computer games as entertainment meritocracies”, in Studying the Event Film: The Lord of the Rings, ed. Harriet Margolis, Sean Cubitt, Barry King, and Thierry Jutel, pp. 280-288. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008. ISBN 9780719071980.

Nicholls, B. “Mediation”, Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, pp. 2923-2928. ed. George Ritzer London: Blackwell, 2007 ISBN: 1405124334.

Nicholls, B. “Leibniz”, The Deleuze Dictionary, ed. Adrian Parr. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005, pp. 142-144. ISBN 0748618996. Reprinted in Deleuze Dictionary: Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010, pp. 145-147. ISBN 0748641467.

Nicholls, B. and Ryan, S. C. “Playing in the Zone: Thirdspace in Jet Set Radio Future and Shenmue II” Scan: Journal of Media Arts Culture (vol. 1, no. 1, Jan. 2004). http://scan.net.au/scan/journal/display.php?journal_id=22, ISSN 1449-1818. (also printed in non-refereed journal Artspace, series 8, 2003, ISBN 1-920781-01-3).

Nicholls, B. and Ryan, S. C. “Game, Space and the Politics of Cyberplay” (my contribution 50%). fineart forum vol. 17, no. 8 (Aug 2003). http://www.msstate.edu/Fineart_Online/Backissues/Vol_17/faf_v17_n08/reviews/nicholls.html, ISSN 1442 4894. Also available http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/dac/papers/Nicholls.pdf

Nicholls, B. and Devadas V, “Postcolonial Interventions: Gayatri Spivak, Three Wise Men and the Native Informant” (my contribution 50%), Critical Horizons: A Journal of Social and Critical Theory, vol. 3, no. 1, 2002, pp. 73-101. ISSN 1440-9917