Global Fables

Online Symposium

12-13 September 2024

Hosted by Rethinking Fables in the Age of Global Environmental Crisis, University of Kent

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The fable stands as a truly global genre. Animal stories are ubiquitous in most cultures, and many fables have travelled across languages, cultures, and regions, changing shape to adapt to new societies, while playing a crucial role in knitting our worlds together.

This two-day online symposium explores the global tradition and circulation of fables by engaging with stories in many languages and from diverse cultures, including South Asian and Middle-Eastern fables, and transatlantic fables featuring tricksters such as Brer Rabbit and Anansi. We also consider contemporary reworkings of fables, and how these stories shed light on our understanding of other species and the entanglement of nonhumans in regional and global politics. Throughout the symposium, we will approach the fable as a vibrant living tradition, recognising the power of animal storytelling to address pressing issues such as the environmental crisis and other global challenges.

Enquiries: Kaori Nagai  [E-mail: K.Nagai@kent.ac.uk ]  

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Provisional Schedule

September 12th

9-11am (UK time) – Welcome &  Fables from Asia

Shonaleeka Kaul (Jawaharlal Nehru University), The ‘Antinomic Didactic’: Rethinking Fable in the Indic Tradition

Kelsey Granger (Ludwig Maximilians University), Till Debt Do Us Part: Medieval Chinese Buddhist Tales of Human Debt and Animal Rebirth

Tangiku Itsuji (Hokkaido University /CAIS), Characteristics of Ainu Fables

Shreyasi Sharma, What the Bird Had: Noticing Nonhuman life and Writing through Fables

1-2:45 pm  (UK time)  Anansi and Bre’r Rabbit: Transatlantic fables

Rachael Pasierowska (Lincoln University), Bre’r Rabbit and Buh Fox in African American Storytelling as Education of Enslaved Children in the Antebellum U.S. South to Linguistic Approaches in Pedagogy Today

Emily Zobel Marshall (Leeds Beckett University), Postcolonial Tricksters: African Diasporic Folklore in Contemporary Culture

Winsome Monica Minott (University of Kent), You can Bet on Ananse

3:00- 4:45  (UK time) African Fables

Elleke Boehmer (Oxford), Narrative intervention and the African hyena folktale

Tinashe Mushakavanhu (Oxford), Fabled up histories: an archive against censorship

5:00-6:00  (UK time)

Josie Rae Turnbull, The Fabled Fortunes of A Fish: Sunset of the Arowana Industry

September 13th

9: 45-10:00 (UK time)

Beatrice Gründler, Kalīla and Dimna – AnonymClassic / Arabic Literature Cosmopolitan

10.00 – 11.45 am (UK time) Continuity and Circulation of Fables in the Circum-Mediterranean

Heidi Mohamed Bayoumy (Cairo University), Revisiting Ecological Fables: An Ecocritical Reading of Selected Arabic Animal Stories and Plays for Children

Mariagrazia Portera (University of Florence / MESH), Fables for the Anthropocene: birds, sprites and sylvan roosters in Giacomo Leopardi’s ‘Small Moral Works’

Kevin Blankinship (Brigham Young University) Al-Maʿarrī’s Ultra-Short Ascetic Animal Stories

2-4 pm  (UK time) Future global fables

Gro Birgit Ween (University of Oslo), Mythical origins to contemporary conversations with salmon

Carrie Dohe (Cologne, MESH), Bees for Peace

Hadar Elyashiv and Camila Neder (IDEA-CONICET/Universidad Nacional de Córdoba), Once upon a time … a scientific fairy tale

Cameo Marlatt, Guillem Rubio-Ramon, and Shawn Bodden (University of Edinburgh), Future fables: Re-learning to live with animals through place-based writing workshops

Feature Image: “Brer Rabbit?” by Speed-Light is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.