‘Once upon a time when birds and animals spoke ….’ But which time?
Rethinking Fables in the Age of Global Environmental Crisis
Courtesy British Library: Shelfmark: LR.26.d.7
Welcome to Rethinking Fables in the Age of Global Environmental Crisis (2023-2025), an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded networking project, led by Dr. Kaori Nagai, Senior Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of Kent. Since its launch in June 2023, we have held a series of fable-themed workshops to develop innovative approaches to the genre, and to produce new fables for our times. Drawing on fables of different cultural and linguistic traditions, including non-European and indigenous fables, we have taken seriously the diverse non-human forces that shape the stories of our world, such as climate change and AI as talking non-humans.
This online exhibition showcases the fables that emerged over two years of collaborative activities as well as the works of some fabulists with whom we became connected. We hope you enjoy it, and please tell us what you think by completing our online survey. Below, you’ll also find information about the final conference and the link to the main project page.
Online Exhibition
Final Conference
Programmes and Book showcase
Online Survey
We'd love to know what you think about the fable and our project
The Project Webpage
Call for Fables
Do you know any fable that speaks to a contemporary issue? If not, can you invent one?
A Challenge
Can you take up this fable-writing challenge by the fabulist Suniti Namjoshi?
Rethinking Fables in the Age of the Environmental Crisis
Principal Investigator: Dr. Kaori Nagai, School of Humanities, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK
Kent Animal Humanities Network webpage
School of Humanities webpage