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Hollis Taylor Hollis Taylor i(A134685 works by)
Gender: Female
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1 Anecdote and Anthropomorphism : Writing the Australian Pied Butcherbird Hollis Taylor , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australasian Journal of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology , Summer vol. 1 no. 2011;
This paper surveys textual references to the Australian pied butcherbird (Cracticus nigrogularis). We begin with my initial encounter with this songbird (in re-worked excerpts from the book Post Impressions), and then expand our review to aboriginal stories, historic ornithological reports and field guides, informal stories, archival Australian periodicals, children’s literature, literary references, and composers’ texts. Many of these reveal the tension between the superlative pied butcherbird vocal abilities and their ferocious hunting prowess. The paper shuns neither anecdote nor anthropomorphism as it attempts a new mode of interspecies narrative. I argue that anecdotes can contribute to an understanding of this understudied songbird. In inventorying pied butcherbird textual references, we find that our stories about them are ultimately stories about us as well—anthropomorphism seems to be an innate human proclivity. Reflecting on the lives of animals is of psychological, intellectual, and metaphysical significance for humans.
1 form y separately published work icon Shocking Pink Hollis Taylor , Jane Ulman , 2010 Australia : ABC Radio National , 2010 Z1710046 2010 single work radio play

'A quirky and unblinking look at anthropologist, activist, botanist and eccentric Olive Pink in the Red Centre. She sustained a 40-year, one-woman campaign on behalf of Aboriginal peoples until her death in Alice Springs in 1975.

'Music for string quartet plus the (now enchantingly distressed) first piano in Alice, brought up on the back of a camel. Underpinning the work are Miss Pink's increasingly acerbic and disheartened letters to her doctoral professor at the University of Sydney.'

Source: ABC Radio National's Airplay website, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/airplay/
Sighted: 21/07/2010

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