Speculative fictioning with scholars and secondary school students
Sarah E. Truman will give an overview of their Australian Research Council research project focused on speculative fiction.
Speculative fictioning with scholars and secondary school students
06 May 2025, 13:00 – 14:00
As part of the project, high school students in Australia, Canada, and the UK have studied and written speculative fictions on the themes of sustainability, technology, and social justice, and engaged with writing by transdisciplinary scholars who use speculative fiction in their research.
Speculative fiction refers to texts (novel, film, other media) that probe readers/viewers to ask ‘what if’ questions, and reconsider the quotidian certainties of the past, present, and future. Such texts may defamiliarise readers’ thinking about what is, or cause readers to reconsider what could be through describing different worlds, or describing this world, differently.
While speculative fictions generally do not attempt to realistically represent the current world, through the exploration of alternative, or extrapolated, or fantastical stories, speculative fiction is a medium that allegorically or metaphorically can draw attention to elements of our current world or research that may need to be reconsidered.
The seminar will include a lecture on some of the findings from the project, followed by an activity where seminar participants will have the opportunity to think through some of the project’s prompts and discuss their own research areas in relation to (speculative) fiction.
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Professor Sarah E. Truman
Trans-disciplinary scholar in literary education, cultural studies, and the arts, and co-director the Literary Education Lab
University of Melbourne
Professor Truman's research focuses on the relationship between Indigenous climate fictions, literary education, and climate justice.
Their project ‘Speculative Futures’ focuses on speculative fiction as an interdisciplinary method for thinking about the world and modes of literary engagement in diverse pedagogical settings (high schools, universities, and interdisciplinary scholarship).
Further information
Ticketing
Pre-booking essential
Cost
Free
Open to
All
Availability
Yes
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