Friday 2 September 2022
12.00-14.00 Registration
14.00-14.15 Welcome
14.15-16.15 Panel A: Animating the rabbit: production, genre and representation in the 1978 film adaptation of Watership Down
‘Revisiting the production of Watership Down through the Arthur Humberstone Animation Archive’
Klive Humberstone (independent), Nigel Humberstone (independent), and Chris Pallant (Canterbury Christ Church University)
‘Prince with a Thousand Faces: Shifting Art Styles and the Depiction of Violence in Watership Down’
Sam Summers (Middlesex University London)
‘“I know now. A terrible thing is coming”: Watership Down, Music and/as Horror’
Leanne Weston (University of Warwick)
‘“Won’t somebody please think of the bunnies?” On rabbits, genre and suitability for children’
Catherine Lester (University of Birmingham)
16.15-16.30 Tea/coffee
16.30-17.30 Keynote 1: Rosamond Mahony
Saturday 3 September 2022
9.00-10.00 Keynote 2: Dr Briony Wickes
10.00-10.15 Tea/coffee
10.15-12.15 Panel B: Watership Down in Other Media
‘A Short Survey of Tabletop Role Playing Game Adaptations of Watership Down’
Tim Hutchings
‘Watership Down, Bunnies and Burrows, and the World of Role-Playing Games’
Scott R. Robinson and B. Dennis Sustare
‘Much Ado About Rabbits? Watership Down’s Britain’
Frances Critchley
‘The Many Faces of Watership Down: Depicting Departure from Childhood’
Ekaterina Shatalova
10.15-12.15 Panel C: Writing Animals
‘“Unrighteous, Unrabbitlike, and Inhuman”: Le Guin, Adams, and Lockley’
John D. Rateliff
‘“The lingua franca of the hedgerow”: Lapine linguistics and invented languages in Watership Down’
Jim Clarke and Hülya Mısır
‘Exploring the Language of the Owsla’
Andrew Higgins
‘The Kingdom of the Prey: Watership Down‘s Enduring Influence on Diminutive Animal Fantasy for Children’
Kiel Phegley
12.15-13.15 Lunch
13.15-14.45 Panel D: Watership Down and its Intertexts
‘“Poor creatures” like “trees in November”: Cowslip’s warren and Ishiguro’s clones’
Debbie Gascoyne
‘“Master Rabbit I saw”: The epigraphs of Watership Down’
Kat Humphries
‘Watership Down (1978 and 2018) as Eco-Epic Animation’
Amanda Potter
13.15-14.45 Panel E: Watership Down Abroad
‘Watership Down’s French Journey to Fame: How Does a Children’s Book Become a Classic (or Doesn’t) through Translation?’
Virginie Douglas
‘From Les Garennes to Watership Down: How Evolution in French Reception Has Translated into a New Text’
Vivien Feasson
‘Edits or creative revisions? Exploring variant texts of Watership Down’
Michael Mikesell
14.45-15.00 Tea/Coffee
15.00-16.30 Panel F: Natural History and Ecology
‘‘Humans are so Rabbit’: Watership Down and Theory of Mind’
Catherine Butler
‘Through The Eyes of Prey: How Watership Down Deconstructs the Anthropocene through Its Anthropomorphic Characters’
Momoko Mandere
‘On the Ridge Between Bull Banks and Watership Down: Eco-Ontology and the Negotiation of Space’
Lisa Sainsbury
15.00-16.30 Panel G: Mythological Aspects
‘“The rabbits became strange”: Watership Down and the literature vs. folklore question’
Dimitra Fimi
‘Prince of a Thousand Enemies: Hazel, Paul Atreides and genre interpretation of the heroic myth’
Daniel Pietersen
‘Two Types of Heroism?’
Frances Foster
16.40 -17.40 Keynote 3: SF Said
Watership Down at 50 