Sara Bjärstorp and Petra Ragnerstam: Fortune and Felicity: Literature and Embodiment in Participatory Culture

Welome to a K3 seminar with Sara Bjärstorp and Petra Ragnerstam, Senior Lecturers in English Studies at K3. The title of the talk is:

Fortune and Felicity: Literature and Embodiment in Participatory Culture

The talk will be held on Wednesday, November 15 at 10.15-12.00 in room NIC 0541 (K3 Open Studio, Niagara).

Here is an abstract for the talk:

What happens when the world of Jane Austen is materialized in live action role playing? In this seminar we present recent field work on a major avant-garde live action role playing game (larp) where Jane Austen’s novels were adapted into a collaborative storytelling event. During five days, over one hundred participants constructed a collective story by embodying characters from Jane Austen’s world. In comparison to other adaptations, fidelity to the original is not the focus, but rather the participants’ immersion in the story and the storyworld. We will focus on how gender and sexuality was constructed in the game which is interesting since gender is a major issue in the novels, the numerous other adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels and in the construction of the Regency period. It was also a major issue in the creation of Fortune and Felicity and a major experience that the participants had of the larp. How was gender produced in the larp and what means did the participants have to produce gender and sexuality in specific ways? Was subversion possible, and if so, how? 

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