AustLit

'In her novel The Natural Way of Things (2016), Charlotte Wood investigates how taxidermic tactics participate in creating contemporary Australian gender relations. She documents how women who resist patriarchal ordering are assigned the status of taxidermic animal-objects as they are composed as sluts. Rather than simply critiquing the objectification of women or seeking to restore women marked as deviant to human status, Wood utilizes the position of the animal-object to challenge patriarchal constructions of the human and to illuminate the insights that become available from positions other than the human, signaling possibilities for feminist taxidermic practice.'  (Publication abstract)

'On Anzac Day 2005 John Howard proclaimed that Anzac soldiers had 'bequeathed Australia a lasting sense of national identity'. Howard's speeches and other efforts to revitalise Anzac Day have generated questions about his vision of the Australian nation...