Symposium organizer Jodey Castricano (back left) along with graduate students Annie Furman (left front), Madeline Donald (middle), and Zach DeWitt (right)
A unique collaboration is providing a research exchange between UBC Okanagan and soon-to-be visiting faculty from England’s University of Exeter, at UBC’s Okanagan campus. Entitled, Telling Stories: The Humanities in an Age of Planetary Agenda-Setting, this initiative involves collaborators Dr. Jodey Castricano (UBCO), Dr. Ina Linge (U Exeter), Dr. Paul Young (U Exeter). This event is stage two of a series of events housed at both University of Exeter and UBC Okanagan, and aims to move towards and make space for an Arts/Humanities response to climate change, mass extinction, and environmental degradation, in order to drive healthy, sustainable, and just social and environmental change.
At a time when demands for environmental sustainability and food system justice are increasingly urgent, and planetary agendas are being set by scientific and financially interested parties, this project explores how Arts and Humanities scholars and artists at both Exeter and UBC Okanagan can contribute to agenda setting and climate justice through storytelling methods. This approach is important because stories serve to naturalize certain ways of thinking about and acting in the world, and because they can invite and inspire meaningful social and cultural engagement and action.
By engaging scholars, thinkers, makers, and creatives, we aim to reframe and rewrite climate justice narratives–ie. stories–that are currently exclusive to science, technology, and economics.
This event is stage two of the collaboration and includes both a symposium (July 19th, 2023) and a Multispecies Storytelling Workshop (July 21st, 2023). Our symposium takes place at UBC Okanagan campus, while the Multispecies Storytelling Workshop is situated on the land at Woodhaven Eco Culture Centre, both of which are on the unceded and ancestral land of the Okanagan Syilx people.
Follow the link below to learn more and to register for the symposium and workshop.
Telling Stories Symposium and Workshop
This event is supported by a UBC Okanagan-Exeter Excellence Catalyst Grant entitled “Telling Stories: The Humanities in an Age of Planetary Agenda-Setting”, the Faculty of Critical and Creative Studies and is organized by the Post-Anthropocentrism and Critical Animal Studies Research Group [PACAS].