ALiEN

Alternative Lives in Experimental Narratives 

If we are aware of how and why the boundaries of reality have been transcended in different cultures and epochs, we will better understand our own reality.

ALiEN is a research group at Salzburg University which investigates literary and cultural phenomena with regards to the Fantastic and the strategies by which these are realised. 

ALiEN is a development of the Project Fantastic Body Transformations / Fantastische Körpertransformationen (Body Transformations in British Fantastic Literature from the Mid-Eighteenth Century to the Present), funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) between 2004 and 2008. It collaborates with a wide range of national and international research institutions and cultural partners.

ALiEN provides a dynamic forum for interdisciplinary networks of research in the Humanities, Social and Anthropological Sciences. It is especially dedicated to the research of fantastic worlds, alternative and extreme forms of life and notions of identity in literature, the arts, cultural practices and infrastructures. 

ALiEN is directed both at investigating the relationship between imagination and reality and at examining the strategies employed in conveying disruptions. It pursues the following 

Research Axes: 
1. The Boundaries of Being 
2. Fantastic Body Transformations 
3. Theory of the Fantastic 
4. Fantastic Literature as a Means of Communication 
5. The Fantastic and Society