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Fellow Publishes Study of Kangaroos

11th February 2013

Kangaroo

Centre Fellow Professor John Simons has published a pioneering work on kangaroos.

In Kangaroo, published in the Realktion books series, Professor Simons examines the use and abuse of this animal, a favourite at zoos across the world, and its place in culture.

From indigenous Australian societies to the first contacts with Europeans, and from their export for exhibition in the Western world to its adoption as Australia’s ‘national’ animal: the kangaroo evolved at the intersection of very different cultures. And while it has come to represent Australia like no other animal, the kangaroo is still greatly misunderstood there and is at the centre of controversies regarding the eating of its meat and the killing of its populations. The creature’s true diversity has frequently been reduced to a handful of stereotypes – misrepresentations that now threaten the future of the species.

Professor John Simons is Executive Dean in the Faculty of Arts at Macquarie University, Sydney. His other books include Animal Rights and the Politics of Literary Representation (2002), Rossetti’s Wombat (2008) ) and The Tiger that Swallowed the Boy: Exotic Animals in Victorian England (2012).

More information about the book is available here.