5 Sept – Visible Whiteness: Race, History & Video-games – Helen Young

On Wednesday 5 September, Dr Helen Young presents the next Writing and Literature seminar, “Visible Whiteness: Race, History, and Video-games”. All welcome, but please contact Sue Chen to book your spot: [email protected]

When: Wednesday 5 September, 1–2 pm

Where: Deakin University’s Burwood campus, room C2.05; Geelong campus, room IC1.108

In twenty-first century popular culture, the European Middle Ages are conventionally imagined as “whites only” spaces; departures from this norm typically elicit negative responses, including credible threats of violence. This paper draws on critical race theory, particularly Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks’ Lacanian approach detailed in Desiring Whiteness (2000), to explore processes of white racial identity formation implicated in and enabled through such representations.

The paper explores the specific function of visual historical fictions in such formations as they (paradoxically) de-historicize race, and examines how games and gaming culture can work to anachronistically inscribe white identities into the past. It takes the video-game Kingdom Come: Deliverance (Warhorse Studios, 2018), promoted by its makers as a “realistic single-player RPG set in medieval Europe” and “Dungeons and no dragons”, as an illustrative example.

Presenter Biography

Helen Young is a lecturer in Literary Studies at Deakin University. Her research interests include critical whiteness studies, popular culture, and medievalism. Her most recent book, Race and Popular Fantasy Literature: Habits of Whiteness, was published by Routledge in 2015.

Helen’s presentation will follow directly after a seminar by author and PhD candidate Toni Jordan, “The Hidden Romantic: Re-Evaluating the Genre Participation of Moliére Using Parodic Fictocriticism”, from 1-2pm.