Spaces and Places in the Fantastic: Exploring Fantastic Geographies

Kristin Aubel · Sarah Edwards · Christian Lenz

Jun 2025 · Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Ebook

341

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Eligible

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About this ebook

This book is an interdisciplinary collection of essays examining the spaces and places central to fantasy, science fiction, and horror across literature, film, television, art, and video games. By employing new and interdisciplinary approaches, this volume highlights the intricate interplay between setting, imagination, and cultural context in the fantastic. Through its diverse themes and texts, it provides a comprehensive overview of contemporary research on how spaces both function in and shape fantastic storytelling. What unites these essays is their sharp observations of the complex workings of fantastic geographies and their ability to challenge and contribute to preconceived notions and existing research.

The included essays explore how fantastic landscapes – from soundscapes and digital worlds to bodies in and as spaces – shape identity, reflect social ideas and norms, and challenge perceptions of the real world. Contributions from international scholars address a wide range of topics, such as queer and digital spaces, cartography, and the fine arts, offering fresh perspectives on the construction, poetics, and functions of fantastic geographies.

The editors are united in their research interest in the fantastic and literary geography. The essays collected in this edited volume are based on a conference they organised in 2022 at TU Dortmund University, Germany.

About the author

Kristin Aubel holds a Master’s degree in Applied Literary and Cultural Studies from TU Dortmund University, Germany. After teaching in Dortmund and Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany, she is now a university assistant at the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria. Her research interests include myth, identity construction, migration literature, magical realism, fantasy, and superhero comics.

Sarah Edwards (née Neef) holds a Master’s degree in British and American Literary and Cultural Studies. From 2017-2024 she was a re-search assistant in British Literary and Cultural Studies at TU Dortmund University, Germany. Her research interests include literary geography, the cultural geography of the city, and urban fantasy.

Christian Lenz is an Associate Professor at the Department of British Studies at TU Dortmund University, Germany. His main research interest is cultural geography in its many facets, having written his first book about Geographies of Love (2016). He has published articles on geographical notions in popular literature, erotic fiction, youth culture, and the fantastic.

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