Making 'Legless in London'. From 19th Century Disability Culture to Modern Tabletop Gaming. 16+

Wednesday 7 August | 2pm

Tickets: £5

How were amputees, prosthesis users, and artificial devices represented in nineteenth-century literature and culture? Why is this topic significant? And why on earth make a board game about it?!

This talk by Dr Ryan Sweet (Senior Lecturer in Humanities, Swansea University) will address these questions as he introduces his research on disability in nineteenth-century culture and traces how this has led to him codesigning a new board game provisionally entitled "Legless in London".

Dr Sweet's talk will explain how social preferences for physical normalcy became dominant in the nineteenth century and how this related to the burgeoning of a new market for prosthetic body parts. He will then show how these devices were creatively imagined and represented by nineteenth-century writers (such as Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe) in ways that curiously often went against the grain. Towards the end of his talk, Dr Sweet will explain the significance of his findings and why he decided to create a board game about this topic. He'll then finish with a short demo of his game, "Legless in London".