Australian Utopian Literature
Dublin Core
Title
Australian Utopian Literature
Description
I began researching nineteenth-century Australian utopian literature during a summer research scholarship to the Australian National University in 2008-2009. Since this time, I have returned to the topic at various times during my studies (in comparative literature) and work (in rare books and special collections) for conference papers, public talks, and publication projects. It is a topic I hope to pursue further in the future.
Collection Items
The Victorian Crisis of Faith in Australian Utopian Literature, 1870-1900
The research behind this paper was motivated by Lyman Tower Sargent’s keynote address on Australian utopian literature, presented at the Demanding the Impossible: Utopia, Dystopia and Science Fiction conference, held at Monash University in 2007. In…
The Australia to Come: Exploring Nineteenth-Century Visions of Australia's Future
What kinds of futures did nineteenth-century Australian writers imagine? From stories looking forward to better, utopian societies, to those warning against dark, dystopian turns, this body of literature engages with a broad range of contemporary…
Colonial Utopia, Indigenous Dystopia: Imagining Australia’s Future in Nineteenth-Century Utopian Literature
Writing of colonisation in the Americas, utopian studies scholar Lyman Tower Sargent observed that the “colonies produce utopias for the colonists and dystopias for the colonized.” This certainly holds true in the Australian context, where the…
Melbourne and Mars: My Mysterious Life on Two Planets
When editor Joseph Fraser is asked to publish the diaries of a local merchant, he can hardly believe what he is reading. Adam Jacobs has been leading a strange double life: split between the harsh struggles of colonial Melbourne, and the wonders of a…
Locating Melbourne and Mars in the World of Literature
Australia saw a rush of utopian fiction in the late nineteenth century. Speculative accounts of futuristic Australian cities or otherworldly societies were used to explore the social and ethical issues facing the colonies. It was in this hopeful…