Canadian scholar, Adam Muller, will speak about the creation of an immersive virtual education tool representing an Indian Residential School in an attempt to bring survivors of genocide closer to secondary witnesses

Embodying Empathy: Canadian Settler-Colonial Genocide and the Making of a Virtual Indian Residential School

Adam Muller, University of Manitoba  

Wednesday, November 18

4:00 PM

710 Social Sciences

West Bank, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

This presentation introduces and reflects on some of the key challenges facing researchers involved with the multidisciplinary critical and creative Embodying Empathy project now underway at the University of Manitoba. Embodying Empathy seeks to construct a digital representation of a Canadian Indian Residential School (IRS) using virtual and augmented reality technologies. The project’s digital “storyworld” is being designed as a museum-quality educational tool that will instruct those immersed in it about Canadian settler-colonial genocide. It also seeks to ascertain whether immersive representations can bridge the empathetic distance separating victims from secondary witnesses to atrocity.

Adam Muller is Associate Professor of English at the University of Manitoba (Canada). He specializes in the representations of war, genocide and mass violence, human rights, memory studies, critical theory, cultural studies, and analytic philosophy.

Organized by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, cosponsored by the Human Rights Program, the Institute for Advanced Study collaborative "Reframing Mass Violence," and the Minnesota Humanities Center.