Remixing the Classics

Hamlet the videogame? The Odyssey in VR? How can immersive, playable technologies help make old stories new?

This event is the first in an AHRC seminar series, and looks at adaptation of classic literature in games and virtual worlds. ReMAP member Andrew Burn will be contributing on the subject of young people’s game versions of Macbeth.

Over a quarter of the world’s population plays videogames, and the gaming industry is larger than the film and music industries combined. At the same time, an immersive, three-dimensional ‘metaverse’ is being heralded as the future of digital interactivity. What possibilities might gaming and VR technologies open up for the experience of classic literature and drama–at home, in arts venues, and in the classroom? 

Join us for a discussion with Andrew Burn(UCL), author of Literature, Videogames, and Learning (2021), Rebecca Bushnell(University of Pennsylvania), author of Tragic Time in Drama, Film, and Videogames (2016), and E. B. Hunter(University of Washington in St Louis), creator of Bitter Wind: A Greek Tragedy in Mixed Reality and Something Wicked: The Macbeth Videogame.

We will start with short presentations from each of our speakers and then move into a discussion chaired by Erin Sullivan(Birmingham) and Deborah Cartmell (De Montfort). All are welcome to this free event, including teachers (primary, secondary, and tertiary), creative practitioners, gaming developers, cultural programmers, and anyone else interested in what happens when digital technology and the classics collide.

Sign up at eventbrite. Check the seminar series website for the full programme.

Part of the UKRI-funded research network, Remixing the Classics: Digital Adaptation and the Literary and Dramatic Canon.