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Release: March 29, 1995
Contact: Tom Krattenmaker (609/258-5748)


Princeton-Rutgers Conference Aims
to Put 'Virtual Reality' in Historical Context


PRINCETON, N.J. -- Scholars from Princeton, Rutgers and other
universities will attempt to place the contemporary discussion on
"virtual reality" into historical and comparative context at the
seventh annual Princeton-Rutgers Collaborative Conference, to be
held at the two campuses April 6-8.

Organizing this year's conference are two Princeton assistant
professors -- Thomas Keenan of the English Department and Thomas
Levin of Germanic Languages. Their goal, they say, is to counter
the "utterly a-historical and uncritical public discourse" on the
so-called digital age. To do so, they have invited art historians,
anthropologists, scholars of technology, and literary and cultural
historians and theorists to examine how technologies of
representation have long produced simulated realities.

Keynote speaker Stanley Aronowitz of the City University of New
York Graduate Center will explore the political invocation of
virtuality in contemporary American political discourse. In
addition, two panels will explore questions of cyberspace and
gender, and a film program will address the aesthetic politics of
simulation.

Initiated in 1989 by Earl Miner and George Levine at Rutgers, the
Princeton-Rutgers conference has served as a forum for scholarly
work by members of both universities' humanities faculties.

The conference is free and open to the public. For a detailed
schedule of events and participants, contact Keenan at 609-258-
4077 (keenan@princeton.edu) or Levin at 609-258-1384
(tylevin@princeton.edu).

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