Anna Smol: A Single Leaf

Author: Anna Smol

  • Year’s Work in Medievalism becomes open access

    The peer-reviewed scholarly journal Year’s Work in Medievalism has just become an open-access online publication.  One of its editors, Ed Risden, summarizes the contents of the latest volume: “This current volume includes essays by Nick Haydock on Beowulf in film, Alison Ganze Langdon on Maria Edgeworth’s “The Modern Griselda,” Nick Utzig’s on The Cloisters, William…

  • Tolkien’s Guinever

    In my previously posted thoughts on Tolkien’s The Fall of Arthur, I predicted that the character of Guinever would give rise to a lot more discussion, and we are seeing that debate occurring already on several sites.  Troels Forchhammer, who has listed a thorough collection of reviews on his blog Parma-kenta, has added his own…

  • Now Available: The Body in Tolkien’s Legendarium

    I am pleased to announce that The Body in Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on Middle-earth Corporeality, edited by Christopher Vaccaro, has been published and is now available for ordering.  I am also very happy to see that my essay in this book (“Frodo’s Body: Liminality and the Experience of War”) is in such great company! See…

  • Roman Association of Tolkien Studies

    The international appeal of Tolkien was recently highlighted for me when I was informed that Italian Tolkien scholar Roberto Arduini had translated CF Cooper’s Mythcon reports for the Associazione Romana Studi Tolkieniani / Roman Association of Tolkien Studies. The post, “Premio a Verlyn Flieger: diario della Mythcon 44” is obviously written in Italian, which I…

  • Atlantic Universities: Teaching Showcase 2013

    The Association of Atlantic Universities holds a Teaching Showcase every fall. This year the conference will be held at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. As the CFP states, “The Teaching Showcase provides a forum for people to reflect on teaching practice, discuss issues related to university teaching and learning, and share teaching strategies.”…

  • Fall of Arthur – more reviews

    I posted a list of reviews of Tolkien’s Fall of Arthur back in June, but I now have a few more to add.  Most recently, Kathy Cawsey has published “The Lord of the Round Table” in Open Letters Monthly. Below is my collated list of selected reviews in online publications and in a few blogs (including…

  • Mythcon 44. Days 3-4: Multidisciplinary papers, awards, traditional entertainments, and an extended airport edition

    One of the features of Mythcon is that presenters come from many different disciplines, and on Sunday (July 14) I decided to take in some of the talks from fields outside the areas I typically work in. I started off the day listening to Andrew Higgins undertake “A Linguistic Exploration through Tolkien’s Earliest Landscapes.” Andrew’s…

  • Mythcon 44. Day Two: the land and its inhabitants in fantasy

    The second day of the Mythopoeic Society conference began with a Mythcon tradition: a procession of attendees into the auditorium to listen to the first plenary talk. Our pre-conference updates suggested that we wear our academic regalia for this event — have you ever tried to cram an academic gown into a carry-on bag? I…

  • Mythcon 44. Day One: hot sun, fanfic, and ice cream

    Travelling to Mythcon  in East Lansing, Michigan, I wondered what to expect at my first Mythopoeic Society conference. I later realized that the Tolkien 2005: The Ring Goes Ever On conference that I attended in England was a combined Mythopoeic and Tolkien Society meeting, a fact that I barely recognized at the time in that…

  • Atlantic Mediaeval Association CFP

    Call for Papers:   Sixth Annual Conference of the Atlantic Mediaeval Association 27-28 September 2013 Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada Plenary Paper by Fiona Tolhurst on Female Spirituality in the Late Middle Ages 16:00 Friday 27 Sept (Room TBA) The society and its conference are multi-disciplinary and we accordingly welcome proposals on all aspects of…