Rachel Fetherston Rachel Fetherston i(10646831 works by)
Gender: Female
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Works By

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1 Moving Beyond a Strange Spectatorship : Stories of Nonhuman Road Trauma in Australia Rachel Fetherston , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: Swamphen : A Journal of Cultural Ecology , no. 9 2023; 'What can nonhuman road trauma, more commonly referred to as ‘roadkill’, teach us about ecological crises and human culpability? Incidents of nonhuman road trauma could be described as strange encounters, revealing the shared trauma of the nonhumans and humans involved while simultaneously highlighting the supposed inevitability of such events. I argue that the choice to check the rearview mirror – to exhibit attentiveness and care in self-reflection – is an act of radical correspondence with the more-than-human. Such correspondence functions as a kind of non-spoken letter to both nonhumans and other human drivers; a letter calling for acts of care and attentiveness that acknowledge the nonhuman experience, mourn losses, and possibly instigate radical change when it comes to how nonhuman road trauma is thought about now and hopefully avoided in future. In her work on the ‘Anthropocene noir’, Deborah Bird Rose speaks of ‘the Anthropocene parallel’ in which humans are spectators of the suffering of nonhumans, and also spectators of a suffering that is our own. Written as both an essay and a personal log of my own experiences with nonhuman road trauma, this work draws on Rose’s idea in an attempt to reconcile the concept of what I term a ‘strange spectatorship’, in which humans observe, are implicated in, and turn away from the phenomenon of nonhuman road trauma and what such trauma reveals about human-nonhuman relations, particularly for settler-colonial Australians. Reflecting on anecdotal experiences as well as the representation of roadkill in Australian literature, I explore the strangeness perceived in how settler-colonial Australians are both actors and spectators in nonhuman road trauma. I grapple with the idea of such trauma as a means of better understanding the settler-colonial impact on Australian natural environments, and the consequences for both humans and nonhumans if we do not better address the ethical and ecological consequences of our modern road infrastructure.' (Publication abstract) 
1 Seeking Greener Pages : An Analysis of Reader Response to Australian Eco- Crime Fiction Rachel Fetherston , Emily Potter , Kelly Miller , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , May no. 71 2023; 'IN THEIR WORK ON HOW NARRATIVE MAY HELP AUDIENCES THINK DIFFERENTLY ABOUT other species, Wojciech Malecki et al. refer to the ‘narrative turn’ within academia and its proliferation of research that addresses how ‘moral intuitions often yield to narrative persuasion’ (2). In other words, many scholars are currently asking whether narratives can persuade readers to reflect on and perhaps reconsider their own moral beliefs. The research presented in this paper follows a similar trajectory in its discussion of the results and possible implications of a reader response study that investigated how Australian readers respond to works of Australian eco-crime fiction that portray non-humans and global ecological issues such as climate change in a local Australian context. Resonant with ‘narrative persuasion’—the idea amongst social scientists that ‘a narrative is a catalyst for perspective change’ (Hamby et al. 114)—we consider the capacity of such texts to possibly engage readers with the plight of non-humans in Australia under the impacts of climate change.' (Introduction)
1 ‘Little Difference between a Carcass and a Corpse’ : Ecological Crises, the Nonhuman and Settler-Colonial Culpability in Australian Crime Fiction Rachel Fetherston , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 21 no. 2 2021;

'In 1997, Stephen Knight described Australian crime fiction as a genre that is ‘thriving but unnoticed’ (Continent of Mystery 1). While in recent years Australian crime fiction has gained more attention amongst both academics and reviewers, it is still missing from an area of study in which I believe it demands more notice—that is, ecocritical discussions of Australian fiction. In this paper, I investigate the idea of Australian crime fiction as a largely underexplored representation of the modern environmental crisis, discussing how modern Australian crime fiction often portrays the troubling relationship between human violence and the settler-colonial decimation of Australia’s natural environments and nonhuman animals. Such a relationship indirectly alludes to the impact of a changing climate on Australian communities and ecosystems and suggests that popular genre fiction can contribute in profound ways to broader environmental considerations. With this ecocritical framework in mind, this paper analyses the representation of drought, bushfire and the nonhuman in Jane Harper’s The Dry (2016) and Chris Hammer’s Scrublands (2018), and what such texts reveal to readers about the criminal nature of anthropogenic climate change and the settler-colonial destruction of Australian habitats.'  (Publication abstract)
1 1 Australian Fiction Is Already Challenging the Idea That Catastrophic Bushfire Is Normal Rachel Fetherston , 2020 single work column
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 14 January 2020;

'The stories we tell about bushfire are changing. Our writers have been grappling with its link to climate crisis for years'
1 Greener Pastures and Tangled Gums : The Rise of Australian Eco-fiction Rachel Fetherston , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , December 2016; 'The Australian environment has long been treated as an enigma by a large portion of the non-Indigenous public. For many Australians residing in cities and suburbs, the natural world exists as an entity entirely separate to the goings-on of the everyday. Rural, sweeping pastures and the ‘barren’ outback are often what come to mind for those who do not or are unable to make a conscious effort to engage with nature. A short but destructive history of mining, agriculture, logging and reef-bleaching has left little of our unique biodiversity intact, and current political trends demonstrate a disinclination to ecologically minded policy.' (Introduction)
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