Speculative Australia
Charting the Australian Fantastic: Ecocriticism, Migrant Fiction and Postcoloniality In Australian Speculative Fiction is a collaborative teaching and research project started and maintained by three young scholars from the Universities of Dusseldorf and Cologne. In early 2019, Bettina Burger, David Kern and Lucas Mattila set out to put a spotlight on Australian speculative fiction, which they felt was otherwise largely ignored outside of the Australian literary studies sphere, especially in Europe. Their ambitious project sought (and still seeks) to produce innovative and interactive materials that promise to spur interest in Australian speculative fiction for years to come.
As well as providing innovative teaching resources in the field, this project facilitates interdisciplinary research on Australian speculative fiction. It seeks to provide a platform that highlights individual Australian authors, supported by an interview series and other academic output such as workshops and peer-reviewed publications. It also facilitates cutting-edge, multimedia pedagogical approaches, including an ongoing podcast series. One of its most important outlets is the Speculative Australia blog on display here but also in the near future on the website of the Centre for Australian Studies (link tba).
In late 2020, Bettina Burger and Lucas Mattila also became Digital Fellows at Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, which not only granted them additional funding for the project, but also allowed them to start contributing their Australian speculative fiction teaching material to a newly built Open Educational Resource platform, ORCA.nrw (openly available in summer 2021).
Lecturer-Editors: Bettina Burger and Lucas Mattila
Student-Editors: Anika Klose, Melissa Teschen, and Samantha Saur
Other Courses
“Other Courses” is currently the category under which blog posts that go beyond the scope of Australian speculative fiction will be published. This can include posts from students in other classes offered by the ANG 5 department as per previous arrangement, but also posts by students from the English and American Studies Department in general. Lecturers are also very welcome to participate.
If you want to contribute a blog post to this section, please contact us at:
Lucas.Mattila@hhu.de and Bettina.Burger@hhu.de
Other categories will be added on demand, though we ask lecturers to provide their own descriptions for the “About” page (as seen here).
If you want us to add another, more specific category, please contact us at:
Lucas.Mattila@hhu.de and Bettina.Burger@hhu.de