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Clare Archer-Lean Clare Archer-Lean i(A81011 works by)
Gender: Female
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Works By

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1 Animal Representative Presence : Problems and Potential in Recent Australian Fiction Clare Archer-Lean , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Routledge Companion to Australian Literature 2020;
1 Science/Literature: The Interface Jessica White , Clare Archer-Lean , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , November no. 65 2019;
'This special section of the Australian Humanities Review emerged from the Literary Studies Convention at the Australian National University from 3-7 July 2018. As a conference which brought together Australia’s four major literary studies associations, it showcased a range of approaches to literary scholarship to discuss ‘the literary as an interface between different forms of knowledge and processes of knowledge formation, looking at questions of how and through what means the literary is communicated, represented, negotiated, and remade’. One of the approaches prompted by this theme was the ways in which literature can translate, communicate, or re-imagine scientific knowledge. This seemed particularly apt given that one of the definitions of ‘interface’ is ‘an apparatus designed to connect two scientific instruments so that they can be operated jointly’ (Oxford English Dictionary), for example, two different computer operating systems. In other words, the interface is the meeting place which allows translation to occur.' (Introduction)
1 Revisiting the 'Problem' of Anthropomorphism through Ceridwen Dovey’s Only the Animals (2014) Clare Archer-Lean , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , July vol. 34 no. 1 2019;

'In Ceridwen Dovey’s short story cycle, Only the Animals, inter-textual allusions to established fictional animals are imposed onto settings of human conflict and ventriloquised through diverse animal subjects. This paper defends narrating from a non-human animal perspective, not as a radical act, but as a move to reinvigorate our conceptions of human-animal relations. Meaningful encounters between human and non-human animals are presented with a recognition of the impossibility of full and mutual inter-species understanding. The juxtaposition of the limits of figuring literary animals with human/animal intimacy and incomprehension marks Dovey’s work as a logical progression of some ideas presented in J. M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello. This paper reads Dovey’s deployment of textual self-referentiality and overt intersection with Coetzee’s work in Only the Animals as a reflexive writing form that works to critique another representational dispossession: that of anthropocentric realism. Both works understand that humans do not share language with non-human animals but we often meet questions of the animal through stories. This makes the stories we tell highly significant; indeed – vital – components of the cultural landscape.'

Source: Abstract.

1 David Malouf’s Remembering Babylon As a Reconsideration of Pastoral Idealisation Clare Archer-Lean , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 14 no. 2 2014;

'David Malouf's oeuvre is characterised by a specific treatment of the natural world. Malouf’s sensitivity towards nature is very present in 'Remembering Babylon', inspired by the true story of Gemmy Morrill, ‘lost’ in the ‘wilds’, the novel framed by epigraphs drawn from Romantic poetry. This paper seeks to re-examine this treatment through an ecocritical lens. That is, I seek to explore the novel in terms of its redress of denigrating, exploitative, or idealistic views of human relationships with the non-human natural realm.

'Remembering Babylon' pits characters’ interactions with the natural world in diverse ways and the culminating impression is far from idealistic or apolitical. Ultimately, the novel’s complex rendering of human relationships with place and the non-human animal offers a specific challenge to romanticised visions of place. This argument is counter to some criticism of the novel as idealisation of the natural world at the expense of historically salient political considerations.

''Remembering Babylon' explores the significant political issue of human attitudes to the natural realm in complex ways. In order to reconsider the criticism of idealism, the novel is examined in terms of the genre most closely associated with idealisation of the environment: the pastoral. 'Remembering Babylon' appears to have a complex relationship with what can loosely be termed ‘the pastoral’. The novel revises idealising visions of nature and gently parodies the notion that nature is separate from or a tool of human, cultural concerns, particularly through its figurative and literal foregrounding of the nonhuman animal. The epigraph provides a deliberate and significant signal of Malouf’s challenge to pastoral understandings of nature because the poets cited within it, William Blake and John Clare, arguably offer in their wider body of work what might be termed a post-pastoral ethos that evokes, challenges and thus adapts pastoral idealism of nature. The paper suggests that 'Remembering Babylon' expresses such a post-pastoral ethos, if in a very different context and form from Blake and Clare.' (Publication abstract)

1 Transnational Impulses as Simulation in Colin Johnson’s (Mudrooroo’s) Fiction Clare Archer-Lean , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: Transnational Literature , May vol. 5 no. 2 2013;
1 Animals, Fiction, Alternatives Clare Archer-Lean , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: Social Alternatives , vol. 32 no. 4 2013; (p. 3-5)
1 Book Reviews : The Humanising of History : Kate Howarth's 'Ten Hail Mary's' Clare Archer-Lean , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: Social Alternatives , vol. 30 no. 1 2011; (p. 56-58)

— Review of Ten Hail Marys : A Memoir Kate Howarth , 2008 single work autobiography
1 Bats and Crows : Ambiguity as Journey in Mudrooroo/Johnson's Master of the Ghost Dreaming Series Clare Archer-Lean , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journeying and Journalling : Creative and Critical Meditations on Travel Writing 2010; (p. 175-188)
'Clare Archer-Lean focuses 'on the textual strategies of journey and impermanence. These can be understood through theoretical notions of trickster, a deliberately incoherent and slippery figure/story, alongside the symbolic ramification of water, representing movement and fluidity, to read Johnson's use of the journey motif. The journey motif in these works can be expanded to included the intra-textual journeys Johnson's writing carries out between its own past and present forms and how this self-referentiality constructs a challenge to the notion of a fixed and stable journal and record of any journey.' (175)
1 Editor's Introduction : Revisiting Literary Utopias and Dystopias : Some New Genres Clare Archer-Lean , 2009 single work column
— Appears in: Social Alternatives , vol. 28 no. 3 2009; (p. 3-7)

Since Thomas More's first use of the word utopia in 1516 it has conjured multiple and ambiguous connotations. Utopia and its defining antithesis dystopia can be articulations of what we wish to become or to avoid becoming, an investigation of hope and the potential for transformation. Utopias can evoke dichotomies between the liberal realisation and the impossible ideal (Kumar 1991); or a contrast between the concrete and closed social plan as opposed to the impetus toward hope in the small details of various cultural contexts (Jameson 2006).

(Source : Social Alternatives : Utopias Dystopias : Alternative Visions, 2009)

1 1 Review : A Hatful of Cherries Clare Archer-Lean , 2007 single work review
— Appears in: Social Alternatives , Fourth quarter vol. 26 no. 4 2007; (p. 71)

— Review of A Hatful of Cherries : Stories Félix Calviño , 2007 selected work short story
1 3 y separately published work icon Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Writings of Thomas King and Colin Johnson (Mudrooroo) Clare Archer-Lean , Lewiston Queenston Lampeter : Edwin Mellen Press , 2006 Z1255866 2006 single work criticism
1 Place, Space and Tradition in the Writings of Mudrooroo Clare Archer-Lean , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: Mongrel Signatures : Reflections on the Work of Mudrooroo 2003; (p. 203-223)
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