In April, I had the opportunity to attend the Storytelling & the Environment Symposium hosted by the George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling at the University of South Wales. There, I presented my paper The Mabinogi’s Modern Environment: Re-Staging the Four Branches in Contemporary Wales, which discussed the romanticization of the Welsh landscape in adaptations of the Mabinogi. I encouraged storytellers to acknowledge the human-induced change that these environments are facing. To engage with the landscapes of myth, storytellers must confront the good and the bad, the serene and the industrial.
The conference was a wonderful chance to meet academics and creatives using the humanities to encourage environmentalism in the UK and around the world.
Emma Catherine Watkins 