Jennifer DeVere Brody

Distance learning classroom using Virtual Harlem

Virtual Harlem is a virtual reality reconstruction of Harlem, New York, during the 1920s. It was designed to immerse students of the Harlem Renaissance directly in the historical context of the literature of that period. The goal of this prototype is to develop rich, interactive, and narrative learning experiences to augment classroom activities for students in the humanities. This paper describes a semester-long user study using Virtual Harlem in an English literature course and discusses our experiences of integrating virtual reality technology in the classroom.

Black Cat Fever: Manifestations of Manet's Olympia

Like a manifestant, this text revives the riven, if not rival, discourses of art history and performance studies. Split apart by conventions of seeing and knowing developed in and practiced by the academy, art history and performance studies explicate different textual forms. For example, painting, sculpture, and architecture belong within the purview of art history, whereas plays, parades, and social rituals belong to the field of performance studies. Despite such differences in their historical constitution, both the discipline of art history and the transor inter-discipline of performance studies share an interest in vision, visuality, and scopic regimes (not to mention particular investments in perspective). From Martin Meisel’s landmark 1983 study, Realizations, to Elin Diamond’s recent citation in Performance and Cultural Politics, connections among and between such frames of reference and referent framing draw