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Lecturer studies how speculative fiction can reframe history
It’s fantastical (and futuristic) but a lecturer’s doctoral thesis reimagines modern Australia’s founding through the experiences of a teenage girl who is neither convict nor coloniser.
Endeavour is a two-part creative practice project submitted by Lynnette Lounsbury for her PhD.
The first part is a novel about a protagonist called Lela. As a peacekeeper, she ships convicts off-world to begin an Australian penal colony run by the government and a powerful multi-faith organisation that controls education and healthcare. The moon planet is inhabited not only by carnivorous primeval beasts but also by a humanoid race who resent the interlopers. Lela is forced to consider her role or to turn revolutionary.
The second part is an exegesis exploring the question, “Can speculative fiction reframe history in a future informed by contemporary understandings of the past?” The answer: it can because we “let go of some of the preconceptions and emotions we attach to our own historical stories,” says Dr Lounsbury. See gives as an example Neil Blomkamp’s film District 9, which tells the story of a forced township removal under apartheid using aliens instead of humans. “Suddenly, the inhumanity, the selfishness and the violence seem even more pronounced.”
Lynnette’s project reflects husband Jim’s “foreign-born excitement” about Australian history—he grew up in the United States—and “my love of alternate histories—if one part of the past was changed, would life be different?” What has not changed is Lynnette’s intended audience. She also wrote her two previously published novels for young adults. “I went with what I know and what I teach.” Lynnette is convenor of the communication and English strands in the Bachelor of Arts. “I like the audience, and I like the literature—it is imaginative, raw and unpretentious.”
After seven years of study, “relief” is the word Lynnette uses to describe the feeling of “now writing whatever I want.” The experience, though, will likely benefit her students. “It’s helped me consolidate my thoughts about the ways we talk about the past and how we can end up changing stories to suit our current needs. I look forward to a lot more classroom discussions about the ‘truth’ of the past.”
While conferred, Lynnette will graduate from the University of New England in April.
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