The Virtual Image

media release: What methods of archival research are required to understand virtual images? How can playing with visual and material culture become a research method, and what forms of knowledge can such play reveal? Virtual images are images that come into being when optical technology meets human perception. Their origin can be found in the optical playthings and spectral illusions that were invented or popularized in the nineteenth century, from stereoscopes and zoetropes to the Phantasmagoria and Pepper’s Ghost. In this workshop, participants will have the opportunity to play with nineteenth-century optical toys, including stereoscopes, thaumatropes, and zoetropes, to learn how virtual images are embedded in material and technological forms and activated through embodied play practices. At the same time, we will uncover together how a ludic approach to archival research can generate novel forms of phenomenological analysis that challenge technologically determinist narratives of media history.

Amanda Shubert is the author of Seeing Things: Virtual Aesthetics in Victorian Culture (Cornell University Press, 2025), and numerous articles in journals including Journal of Visual Culture, Early Popular Visual Culture, Victorian Studies, Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, and others. She teaches English at UW-Madison.

Friday, September 25, 3:30pm – 5pm, Nancy Nicholas Hall, room 2194

The workshop is co-sponsored by the Center for Visual Culture and Performance Studies and the Nancy M. Bruce Center for Design and Material Culture.