Das Blog wurde im Sommer 2021 am Institut Anglistik V – Anglophone Literaturen / Literaturübersetzen der Uni Düsseldorf initiiert.
Initially, the blog began as an outlet for the teaching and research project “Charting the Australian Fantastic” and its blog “Speculative Australia”. Thus, “Speculative Australia” is currently the most active category as it is used by previous, current, and future students of courses centring on Australian speculative fiction at the HHU, especially those who take part in the Praxismodul version of the class, which has so far been offered in the summer term 2020 as well as the winter term 2020/2021 and will be offered again in the winter term 2021/2022.
We do hope that the blog will also encourage other lecturers to use this outlet in order to help students engage more actively with the literature they are studying as well as engage with a wider public – the readership of this website. Currently, posts that go beyond the initial subject of Australian speculative fiction will be published under the category “Further Courses and Topics” as well as more specific subcategories but we are very happy to add other main categories as long as they fall broadly within the fields of study covered by the HHU English and American Studies Department.
The posting of actual content will likely begin in the summer term 2021 and pick up the pace in the winter term 2021 once the Praxismodul Charting the Australian Fantastic is running once more.