Archetype of the Dungeon

“International Conference (September 24-25, 2024)

The dungeon, growing out of gaming and popular culture, has become in recent decades an ideal framework for examining the relationship between imagined space and worldbuilding. From experimental maps to the digital sphere, the dungeon has deeply influenced not only tabletop and role-playing games but also traditional artistic practices, evolving into a metaphor for participatory installations and exhibition spaces. The international conference ‘Dungeon: The Iconography of an Archetype from Antiquity to the Digital Age’ seeks to offer a fresh multidisciplinary perspective on the subterranean and labyrinthine space as an iconographic topos, tracing its development from ancient times to the intricate multilayered architectures of contemporary digital culture.

The conference is organized by VeDPH – Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities. Department of Humanities Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. In collaboration with the Department of History, Philosophical and Art History Studies, Tor Vergata University of Rome; 3ARC – Ancient Art Architecture; Università eCampus; Department of Linguistic, Literary, and Aesthetic Studies, University of Bergen.

The keynote speakers will be Carmelo Occhipinti (Full Professor of Museology and Artistic Critics of Restoration at Tor Vergata University of Rome), Mark Algee-Hewitt (Associate Professor of 19th Century English Literature and Digital Humanities at Stanford University), and Espen Aarseth (Chair Professor of Game Studies and Dean of the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong). They will be joined by scholars from Italian and international institutions who will offer reflections on the theme of the ‘dungeon’ as a symbolic space, drawing from the fields of art history, literature, media studies, archaeology, and architecture.”