The Colonial Kangaroo Hunt
Ken Gelder, Rachael Weaver
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As an MUP member you get 40% off the price of this book.
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Imprint
The Colonial Kangaroo Hunt
Ken Gelder, Rachael Weaver
From the arrival of Captain James Cook in 1770 to classic children's tale Dot and the Kangaroo, Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver examine hunting narratives in novels, visual art and memoirs to discover how the kangaroo became a favourite quarry, a relished food source, an object of scientific fascination, and a source of violent conflict between settlers and Aboriginal people.
The kangaroo hunt worked as a rite of passage and an expression of settler domination over native species and land. But it also enabled settlers to begin to comprehend the complexity of bush ecology, raising early concerns about species extinction and the need for conservation and the preservation of habitat.
From the arrival of Captain James Cook in 1770 to classic children's tale Dot and the Kangaroo, Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver examine hunting narratives in novels, visual art and memoirs to discover how the kangaroo became a favourite quarry, a relished food source, an object of scientific fascination, and a source of violent conflict between settlers and Aboriginal people.
The kangaroo hunt worked as a rite of passage and an expression of settler domination over native species and land. But it also enabled settlers to begin to comprehend the complexity of bush ecology, raising early concerns about species extinction and the need for conservation and the preservation of habitat.
“
An impressive feat of scholarship.”
Australian Literary Studies“
Like the literature it discusses, The Colonial Kangaroo Hunt provides a surreal and disconcerting, yet convincing, evocation of our colonial history. By focusing on our relationship with such singular animals, the authors cast into sharp relief our own ambitions and ambiguities, our cruelty and our empathies.”
Danielle Clode, Australian Book Review“
As you’d expect from such accomplished scholar-writers, the book is impeccably researched, perspicuously written, continuously informative, and horribly entertaining.”
Justin Clemens
“
Gelder and Weaver are to be congratulated on this engaging account of the colonial kangaroo hunt. They identify a social practice previously accorded limited significance and use it to comment on something much greater—that “chain of reactions to [novel] species” (5) from naming to eating, managing to trading, scientifically classifying to visually and verbally representing, which all worked in concert to colonise other peoples’ countries.”
Nancy Cushing, Journal of Australian Studies“
The Colonial Kangaroo Hunt is well researched and highly readable….With its wealth of references to primary materials, the book provides a rich source of information for those who wish to familiarise themselves with the colonial frontier, especially the historical and cultural contexts that were vital to the establishment of emigrant society in the southern hemisphere.”
Shu-Chaun Yan, Australian Historical Studies“
The thought that the kangaroo, not just in fictional fantasies but in the most documentary of colonial descriptions, stands in for Aboriginal people is extraordinary. Put simply, we will never be able to look at another written or pictorial description of a kangaroo hunt the same way, or at kangaroos themselves.....I have been at lectures drawing on the material of the book in which Gelder and Weaver have presented their argument and heard the audience gasp…as though our collective unconscious has finally been analysed, so that even though we might continue to perpetrate the same injustices we cannot any longer say we are unaware of doing so.”
Rex Butler, ‘Unprecedented Creatures,’ Sydney Review of Books“
Gelder and Weaver have amassed a deeply researched narrative…carefully supported by extensive and searching accounts of the written texts, the curating of which is a work of great scholarship. Additionally, there are many fine reproductions of supporting works of art, some of which are read into the text with great insight and sensitivity.”
Julian Croft, Australian Literary Studies“
The depth of the primary research in this study is an example of scholarship at its finest point…It is a conscious step forward in our understanding of the process and experience of colonisation as settlers experienced it, and the expertise in this area the authors have brought to bear on their analysis informs the complex, rich and cohesive work.”
Meagan Mooney Taylor, JASALKen Gelder
Ken Gelder is an Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Melbourne. His books include Uncanny Australia: Sacredness and Identity in a Postcolonial Nation (1998, with Jane M Jacobs), Popular Fiction: The Logics and Practices of a Literary Field (2004), Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice (2007), After the Celebration: Australian Fiction 1989–2007 (2009, with Paul Salzman) and, with Rachael Weaver, Colonial Australian Fiction (2017) and The Colonial Kangaroo Hunt (2020).
Rachael Weaver
Rachael Weaver is an ARC Future Fellow in English at the University of Tasmania and a 2024 Visiting Scholar at the State Library of New South Wales. She is the author of The Criminal of the Century (2006) and, with Ken Gelder, The Colonial Journals, and the emergence of Australian literary culture (2014), Colonial Australian Fiction: Character Types, Social Formations and the Colonial Economy (2017), and The Colonial Kangaroo Hunt (2020).
Paperback
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As an MUP member you get 40% off the price of this book.
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As an MUP member you get 100% off the price of this book.
Member discount
As an MUP member you get 25% off the price of this book.
Member discount
As an MUP member you get 25% off the price of this book.
Member discount
As an MUP member you get 25% off the price of this book.
Member discount
As an MUP member you get 40% off the price of this book.
Member discount
As an MUP member you get 10% off the price of this book.
Member discount
As an MUP member you get 35% off the price of this book.
Member discount
As an MUP member you get 40% off the price of this book.
Other formats available
- Ebook$25.99 $25.99 $25.99 $25.99 $25.99
