Browse Items (17 total)

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…

The (Un)Ethical Futures: Utopia, Dystopia and Science Fiction conference was held 15–17 December 2017 at the Monash University Law Chambers in Melbourne, Australia. The conference was organised by an interdisciplinary team of postgraduate students…

Journeys of the Mind is the second part of the Tall Tales and True exhibition. In part one, Journeys Real and Imagined, we endeavoured to show tales of exploration and the imaginary journeys that they inspired. In part two, the journeys are of an…

Australia’s historical and political records regularly omit Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives on the ongoing struggle for Indigenous rights. Their experiences are often framed solely from the viewpoint of relations between Indigenous…

This special double issue of Colloquy: Text, Theory, Critique arises from the (Un)Ethical Futures: Utopia, Dystopia and Science Fiction conference, held 15–17 December 2017 at the Monash University Law Chambers in Melbourne. It carries forward the…

The dominance of sexual violence and gender inequality in young adult paranormal series, including Stephenie Meyer's The Twilight Saga (2005-2008) and Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy series (2007-2010), reflects a disturbing trend in the way issues…

Monash University Library aims to create a safe and inclusive environment for all students, and to deliver accessible research and learning services. To achieve this aim, we developed a new initiative, the Inclusive Teaching Toolkit for library staff…

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…

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…

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…

This chapter asks whether science fiction (SF) has a predisposition to a particular ethical orientation. Rather than seek a single answer to this question of SF’s ethics, Kendal examines two classic SF texts and the traditions they represent: Isaac…

A short volume, Davide Panagia’s Ten Theses for an Aesthetics of Politics (2016) sketches a thought-provoking framework for the reconceptualisation of the aesthetic experience.

In this thesis, I argue that the assumptions and values that underpinned pulp science fiction (SF) from the USA predisposed it to totalising themes and modes of representation that influenced subsequent genre traditions. I contend, however, that SF…

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…

The University of Melbourne Library is developing a new service offering to support the adoption of Open Educational Resources (OERs). This aims to reinforce the University’s values of openness, equity, and inclusion. To deliver this service, it was…

How might emerging politics and biotechnologies, such as artificial wombs, affect our world? Contemporary science fiction experiments with different and innovative modes of literary representation, challenging readers' thinking and making possible…

Ethical Futures and Global Science Fiction explores the ethical concerns and dimensions of representations of the future of global science fiction, focusing on the issues that dominate utopian, dystopian, and science fiction literature. The essays…