What are animals to us, or we to them? How do we humans make sense of them in our legends, bestiaries, natural histories, fables, proverbs, books (for children and adults), games, tales, poems, art ? What do we have to learn about ourselves from such lore and literature? And what do the animals have to teach us?

NILAS is a society, an organization of scholars, storytellers, and interested amateurs united by a shared fascination with such questions. And just as we take animals seriously as the subjects of stories, we also take them seriously as live subjects facing us across a categorical but permeable boundary.

Animals in Folklore and Literature

For our first national meeting next summer in Davis, California, our subject will be Animals in Folklore and Literature, as we meet jointly with the International Society of Anthrozoology and the International Society for Applied Ethology. We invite paper proposals for individual presentations, for a session of storytelling, and proposals for readings by poets or nature writers. We especially invite abstracts for work in progress (essays, dissertations, performances) for a colloquium at which those attending can comment upon the work of others and hear suggestions about their own. We cast our net widely, hoping to gather a mix of storytellers, poets, writers, academics, and other teachers as well as interpretive naturalists and guides.

December 1, 2000. We solicit your immediate interest. If this will be part of your plans, please notify David Wilson at the address below, or at: dswilson@ucdavis.edu. Your immediate response will govern our program. Thank you!

January 31, 2001, abstract deadline: The deadline for submission of abstracts and proposals will be January 31, 2001. A five hundred word abstract or proposal, including title and need(s) for AV support should be sent to David S. Wilson either via the address or email listed below.

See Homepages: http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~nilas/ and http://animalwelfare.ucdavis.edu