A Celebration of
Animals & Nature in Myth & Legend
Animals and landscapes have usually provided the most important metaphors for social divisions along lines of tribe, gender, class, race, and related categories. Seasoned storytellers will explore some of the ways in which cultures define themselves through unique relationships to fauna and flora.
Join us to look closely at ways in which nature and culture combine in the construction of human, as well as tribal, identity, so that social issues are inseparable from environmental concerns.
10 am - 11:45 am
Keynote Presentation: Celebrating Animals & Nature in Legend & Myth
Location: UIS’ Brookens Auditorium on the UIS campus
(One University Plaza in Springfield, Illinois)
ECCE Speaker Series credit for this event only
1:30 pm- 3:30 pm
Nature Story Telling Workshop for Educators
Location: UIS’ Brookens Auditorium on the UIS campus
(One University Plaza in Springfield, Illinois)
7:30 pm- 9 pm
Story Telling in the Round, Author's Reception and Book Signing
Location: Lincoln Memorial Gardens Nature Center, Council
Ring 3 (Due to limited seating, pre-registration is required for
this event! To pre-register contact the Lincoln Memorial Gardens
Nature Center at 217/529-1111 )
There is a $5.00 cost to attend "Story-Tellling in the Round";
there is no fee for students with a current UIS ID Card.
Participation Instructions for Distant Students
Maps and Directions to UIS’ Brookens Auditorium & Parking
Directions to Lincoln Memorial Gardens
List of Published Works by James Bruchac
List of Published Works by Boria Sax
Link to the Organization: Nature in Legend and Story
Link to Illinois Storytelling, Inc.
Link to the Illinois Storytelling Festival Coming Up March 21st
James Bruchac (www.jamesbruchac.com), nationally known cultural educator, author & story teller, will tell Native American tales, with special emphasis on the ways Indians adapted natural materials to their needs in order to survive.
Dr. Boria Sax (www.boriasax.com), author, story teller & UIS Assistant Adjunct Professor of the Web-based course “Animals & Civilization” will show how “totemism,” or collective identification of a nation with animals, may be found in the twenty-first century, by tracing the origin of the legend that Britain will fall if ravens will leave the Tower of London.
Cathy Mosley (www.h-net.org/~nilas), story teller & President of the Illinois-based Nature in Legend & Story, will tell tales fauna and flora and speak about the organization Nature in Legend and Story, which is dedicated 'to promote understanding of traditional bonds between human beings and the natural world.'
Betsy Irwin (www.lmgnc.org), educator, story teller & Education Coordinator at Lincoln Memorial Gardens, will speak of the prairies and woodlands that covered most of Illinois in early America, and how they impacted the lives of both Native Americans and settlers.
