FANTASTIC BODY TRANSFORMATIONS
COOPERATION PROJECT: AKTION ÖSTERREICH-TSCHECHISCHE REPUBLIK
“The Human Figure in (Post-)Modern Fantastic Literature and Art – Bilateral Symposium Salzburg-Brno”
2003-2004
DISSERTATION NETWORK: AKTION ÖSTERREICH-TSCHECHISCHE REPUBLIK
“Literature as Communication”
Jan 2006 – Dec 2006
Project leader: Sabine Coelsch-Foisner
Project partner: Milada Franková
The thematic PhD network between the two cooperating partners (the universities of Salzburg and Brno) entitled “Literature as Communication” should set in motion a thorough scholarly exchange between 10 PhD students. We plan two 10-day workshops per year, where communicative strategies, narrative techniques and literary processes of transformation are analysed systematically. The study of narrative and communicative strategies in fiction is an integral part in the interdisciplinary research between the humanities, the social sciences and the life sciences, since fiction, and primarily, but not exclusively, fantastic literature and science fiction has established itself as a mediator of technological achievements and the changes of living conditions and life expectations ensuing from them.
Participants and the topics of their dissertations:
Klára Bicanová (Brno): “Wit and Esprit: English and French Theories of Poetic Creation between 1650 and 1720”
Zuzana Fonioková (Brno): “The Role of the Reader in the Narrative”
Sarah Herbe (Salzburg): “Genetic Engineering in British Science Fiction”
Tomas Kacer (Brno): “Scientific Theme in Drama”
Markus Niederwimmer (Salzburg): “Parody as Communication”
Martina Nosková (Brno): “Arab-American and Anglo-Arab Writers”
Markus Oppolzer (Salzburg): “Adolescence and Gothic Fiction”
Elisabeth Schober (Salzburg): “A Diachronic Study of Romance and Its Relation to the Fantastic”
Benjamin Wright (Salzburg): “Communication in Disaster Science Fiction”
Darina Zíbová (Brno): “Living the Dreams in the Age of Reason: Towards the Reflections of the Western Culture in the Contemporary Fantasy Literature for Children”
