Seeing Double: Books, Narratives, and Virtual Realities

The sequel to our popular webinar series of Semester 1, this new series will run from 26 August to 4 November 2020.

Histories of virtual reality routinely tell a story of progress, in which early attempts to simulate the real are trumped first by photography, then film, and now by the digital. This is perhaps why digital VR is often quarantined from its non-digital doubles, such as literature, painting, music, theatre, and architecture—all arts of immersion. This online seminar series, the second on ‘Seeing Double’, turns to the book and (more broadly) to narrative as virtual-reality machines, in order to explore some of the worlds they conjure; the devices they use to transport readers to those worlds; and what happens to narrative when it becomes an ‘immersive, interactive experience generated by a computer’ (Murray).

Confirmed dates and speakers:

26 August: Dr Thomas Vranken (University of British Columbia), 'New Romance and the Virtual Return of the Material Obsolete'

7 October: Dr Timothy Gao (Nanyang Technological University), 'Persistent Worlds and Fictional Continuity'

14 October: Dr Eddie Paterson (University of Melbourne), 'Dear Reader: Bookish Adventures and Players as Readers in Virtual Reality Games'

21 October: Dr Joe Hughes (University of Melbourne), 'The Virtual Reality in Narrative: Varieties of the Actual in the Scenic Novel'

28 October: Dr Marie-Laure Ryan, 'Narrative in Virtual Reality? Anatomy of a Dream Reborn'

4 November: Dr Amelia Dale (Shanghai University of International Business and Economics), 'Quixotism as VR'

Format: All six presentations will be streamed live through Zoom webinar software. Registration details for each webinar will be provided in due course - stay tuned for updates!