[Commlist] CfP Animals in Australian Cinema, Literature and the Arts

*CfP Animals in Australian Cinema, Literature and the Arts*

Université Aix-Marseille, bâtiment Turbulence

November 12-13, 2026

International conference organized by Jean-Michel Durafour (Université 
Aix-Marseille)

and David Roche (Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry, Institut 
Universitaire de France)

Keynote speaker: Belinda Smaill (Monash University), author of/Regarding 
Life: Animals and The Documentary Moving Image/(2016)

When British director Nicolas Roeg filmed the Australian outback 
in/Walkabout/(1971), an adaptation of British author James Vance 
Marshall’s 1959 novel, he brought together a whole menagerie of 
Australian wildlife: monitor lizards, wedge-tailed eagles, frilled 
lizards, water buffalo, and, of course, kangaroos. Close singles endow 
each animal with an iconic value, which the mosaic-like montage brings 
together as the embodiment of the hostility and strangeness of this 
environment. For non-Australians unfamiliar with this strangeness, the 
truly extraordinary nature of Australian wildlife (mammals with duck 
bills, rodent-like animals that eject cubic excrement, yellow-crested 
cockatoos instead of pigeons in parks and on roads, etc.) might seem 
like something from another time or another planet. For most of us, ever 
since the first drawings brought back by white settlers in the 18th 
century, these animals have existed primarily/as images/, seen in 
documentaries, books or zoos, all of which participate in the staging 
and spectacularization of exotic phenomena. In/Walkabout/, it is only 
the arrival of an Aboriginal character who will, in a way, put these 
animals back in their “rightful” place, namely as components in the 
ecology and economy of an/actual/environment. From/Picnic at Hanging 
Rock/(Peter Weir, 1975) to the Australian-American 
co-production/Crocodile Dundee/(Peter Faiman, 1986), this celebration of 
Australian wildlife (crocodiles, lovebirds, snakes, etc.), whether 
literal or parodic, has been a staple of a certain type of Australian 
cinema: that which has made its way onto our Western screens.

Wildlife plays a very special role in our perception of the sixth 
continent. Planning a road trip to Australia implies thinking of the 
threat posed by white sharks in the south, dingos in the outback, 
saltwater crocodiles in the north, box jellyfish in summer waters, and 
venomous snakes and spiders on land—or, on the contrary, the hope of 
encountering cuddly animals like koalas and wallabies. Australia's 
animal history is also characterized by the introduction of species by 
humans: whether it be dingoes, estimated to have arrived 5,000 to 10,000 
years ago and which replaced marsupial predators (such as the thylacine, 
which then took refuge in Tasmania); cats, foxes, rabbits, camels and 
sheep introduced by white settlers; or more recently, the ecological 
disaster caused by the introduction of the cane toad to eradicate the 
cane beetle in the 1930s. The non-native species often manage to 
outcompete the endemic species, some of which (dasyurids in particular) 
are on the brink of extinction. Sadly,Australia has the highest rate of 
mammal extinction in the world, and even the iconic koala is now listed 
as an endangered species in some states.

The introduction of animal species also mirrors something like the 
invention of cinema as a medium—a medium invented by the West based on 
its own visual culture (the Italian Renaissance, whose aesthetic and 
ideological choices it “naturalized”)—on the basis of another, earlier 
culture. In effect, cinema can also be seen to have colonized the visual 
field. What does it mean to film mammals whose young develop in an 
external pouch, such as dugongs or kookaburras, in a medium whose 
optical archaeology, in the work of Étienne-Jules Marey or Eadweard 
Muybridge, is based on the decomposition of the flight of 
the/probable/pelican or the gallop of/any/horse?

This two-day symposium thus proposes to explore how Australian animals 
are represented and depicted, and how their experiences are expressed, 
in the arts, cinema, and literature, to unravel their aesthetic 
potential, and to consider their cultural, historical, ecological, and 
anthropological implications. While case studies of animals in specific 
works of Australian literature are plentiful, this is less the case of 
cinema and the arts, in spite of the centrality of animals in these 
mediums. The symposium thus seeks to invite dialogue between the 
representations of Australian animals in various media and, more 
generally, between the humanities and the sciences. It also aims to take 
stock of the centrality of ecological thought in Australian culture (see 
Martin Mulligan and Stuart Hill’s seminal/Ecological Pioneers: A Social 
Historia of Australian Ecological Thought and Action/, published in 2002).

What follows is a non-exclusive list of potential avenues of inquiry:

•*The symbolism of Australian animals*: whether as exotic entities 
(/Walkabout/,/Crocodile Dundee/) or hostile (the crocodile-infested 
river in/The Overlanders/[Harry Watt, 1946]), as symbols of Australia 
(the gallery of Australian animals participating in the Outback Games in 
Mem Fox and Pamela Lofts’s now classic Australian children’s book/Koala 
Lou/, published in 1988) or of an environment so foreign as to become 
fantastical (the bestiary in/Picnic at Hanging Rock/or/The Long 
Weekend/[Colin Eggleston, 1978]), the killer boar in/Razorback/[Russell 
Mulcahy, 1984], the mythical white shark in Tim Winton’s 2008 
novel/Breath/). This symbolic significance should also be considered in 
terms of the relationships that indigenous Australian populations may 
have with animals in their environment (for example, birds and fish in 
Alexis Wright’s 2006 novel/Carpenteria/).

•*Bio-environmental issues (ecology I)*. While works like Tim Winton and 
Cindy Lane’s picture book/Ningaloo/(2025) celebrate Australia’s 
wildlife, the continent is unfortunately known for the devastation of 
its wildlife: the thylacine (which we now only know from a few black and 
white photographs), the considerable collateral damage caused by cane 
toads (documented in/Cane Toads: The Conquest/[Mark Lewis, 1988]). The 
ultimate reversal of this fragile zootope is in every way antipodal: 
whereas, from our point of view, constrictor snakes and venomous 
animals, crocodiles and sharks seem terrifying, Australia’s nature’s 
number one threats are toads and sheep (whose arrival coincides with 
that of the convicts of the British Empire).

*• Decentering human perspectives (ecology II).*In her book/In the Eye 
of the Crocodile/(2012), anthropologist Val Plumwood recounts how she 
survived a crocodile attack in Kakadu National Park in 1985. Her book 
criticizes certain foundations of Western thought, particularly dualisms 
such as culture and nature, human and animal, man and woman (where the 
first term is always lexically valued at the expense of the second). In 
its place, she proposes an anti-Cartesian anthropology, which is no 
longer that of the thinking subject but of the prey: I am edible, 
therefore I am prey; I become the/animal of the animal./As we have 
pointed out, animals were also present at the dawn of cinema, and Marey 
was only interested in human movement as an example of “animal 
locomotion” in general (the title of his seminal work from 1873). This 
shift in focus is at the heart of many Australian visual and literary 
works, such as those that create art with animals (/Snake Drawing/[Susan 
Jacobs, 2012]) or express a post-human animal subjectivity 
(/Translations from the Natural World/[Les Murray, 1980],/The Animals in 
That Country/[Laura Jean McKay, 2020],/The Octopus and I/[Erin Hortle, 
2020]).

•*A different entry point into the devastation of colonization*. The 
colonization of native animals (see Rick De Vos’s 2023 collective 
volume/Decolonising Animals/) leads us to extend the animal question to 
the relationship between/settlers and indigenous peoples/, and notably 
to evoke the violence inflicted on indigenous peoples and their 
confinement to reservations, and to deal with the difficulties raised by 
the idiosyncrasy of Aboriginal cinema through a “white” medium such as 
the novel or cinema. This is evident in Patrick White’s famous 1957 
colonizing travelogue/Voss/, in which the protagonist brings cattle on 
his exploration of the outback, assisted by indigenous trackers. It is 
equally evident in the title of the film/Rabbit Proof Fence/(Philip 
Noyce, 2002), recounting the fate of three members of the “stolen 
generations” and before that, albeit more metaphorically, in the 
gratuitous slaughter of kangaroos in/Wake in Fright/(Ted Kotchef, 1971). 
One might also wonder about the political significance of the virtual 
absence of animals in recent productions by indigenous filmmakers such 
as Aaron Pederson, Ivan Sen and Warwick Thorton: is this relative 
absence a sort of rejection of the postcard image of their environment?

Proposals for papers (including a 300-word abstract, a short biography, 
and a few bibliographical references) in English or French should be 
sent to Jean-Michel Durafour ((jean-michel.durafour /at/ univ-amu.fr) 
<mailto:(jean-michel.durafour /at/ univ-amu.fr)>) and David Roche 
((david.roche /at/ univ-montp3.fr) <mailto:(david.roche /at/ univ-montp3.fr)>) 
by*April 30, 2026*.

Scientific committee:Salhia Ben Messahel (Université de Toulon), Claire 
Cazajous-Augé (Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès), Sarah Hatchuel 
(Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry), Alice Leroy (Université Gustave 
Eiffel), Belinda Smaill (Monash University)

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