COLLABORATIVE INTERPLAYING IN CYBERPUNK AND SECOND LIFE In my dissertation I show that cyberpunk literature and online virtual worlds such as Second Life are engaged in an exchange of fictional forms and literary techniques that has largely been ignored by literary critics and media theorists. Emerging in the 1980s out of the work of William…

THE CYBER-PERFORMATIVE IN SECOND LIFE The research for my MA thesis focuses on the influence the online world Second Life has had on the way language effects change (is ‘performative’) in both real and virtual environments. My research is organized around the problem of explaining how the status of language is altered when utterances made…

I want to study the literary aspects and performative effects of utterances made in on-line environments. The Cultural, Social, and Political Thought (CSPT) program that is available as part of the English MA degree at UVic is the ideal place for me to carry out this research. My double English and History majors helped me…