International conference

Rethinking Fables in the Age of the Environmental Crisis

 May 22-24, 2025

University of Kent, Canterbury, UK (and online)

Deadline: 15 December 2024

Once upon a time, not very long ago, many considered fables to be an anthropocentric mode of representing animals, to be avoided (Derrida 2002). It is then remarkable to see the flowering of scholarship on ‘fables’ in recent years. As the titles of John Hartigan’s Aesop’s Anthropology (2014), Chris Danta’s Animal Fables After Darwin (2018), Kaori Nagai’s Imperial Beast Fables (2020) show, fables have emerged as a key theoretical apparatus in multispecies ethnology, animal studies and environmental humanities. Leading animal studies scholars such as Erica Fudge, Jane Spencer, Donna Landry, and Matthew Chrulew are paying close attention to the role of fables and speculative fabulation to explore the human-animal relationship and our relationship with environmental forces, such as water, ocean, land and wind. It is as if recent climate change and other global environmental crises are amplifying the need for us to listen to the voices of nonhuman agencies, or what Laura Brown (2023) has called the ‘counterhuman imaginary’. We believe that engaging collaboratively with fable animals and other nonhumans from all cultures and regions of the world will help us to tackle our global crises.

‘Rethinking Fables in the Age of the Environmental Crisis’ is an AHRC-funded networking project that explores innovative approaches to the fable genre. Since its launch in June 2023, we have held several fable-themed workshops in 2023 and 2024. This final conference at the University of Kent in 2025 builds on these earlier workshops, with the aim of bringing together, consolidating, and further developing the fable storytelling network. We are delighted to announce that Prof. Vinciane Despret, the philosopher of science and author of What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions (2016) and Susan McHugh, the author of Love in a Time of Slaughters: Human-Animal Stories Against Extinction and Genocide (2019) will be joining us in Canterbury, and that the conference will include a storytelling event at the Gulbenkian Theatre in Canterbury.

We invite you to submit a proposal to be part of this final conference. We also encourage writers, artists, performers, and creators of all kinds who engage the genre of ‘fables’ to submit a proposal to showcase your creative work at our event.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Theories and philosophies of the fable
• Fabulists (Aesop, La Fontaine, Vishnu Sharma, etc.)
• Fables in global cultural history
• Global fables: migration, translation or transmission
• Orality and textuality
• Talking animals / Animal language
• Fables and human-animal relationships (domestication, companionship, experimentation, extinction)
• Fables and species thinking
• Fables and social animals
• Ethics / morality of the fable
• Fables and theatre/performance
• Fables and critique of power / political resistance
• Fables and health/disease
• Tricksters
• Fables and frame narratives
• scientific / technological fables
• Future fables: AI, robots and other nonhumans
• Fables in games, animations and films
• Fables and biology/ethology
• Fables and metamorphosis
• Fable illustrations
• Fable and education
• Oceanic/coastal fables
• Fables and environmental crises
• Fables and artistic practices
• Fables as heritage/inheritance
• Fables and museum objects
• Nontextual fables
• Nonhumans as fabulists

Please send a short abstract of 200-300 words for a 20-minute presentation, along with your bio, to K.Nagai@kent.ac.uk  by December 15, 2024. We also welcome proposals for non-paper based presentations (storytelling, performance or other artistic work).  In your proposal, please indicate whether you intend to attend the event in person or online.