Category Archives: Medievalisms

Leeds is the place to be next week for Tolkien talks

01 Friday Jul 2022

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Although I wish I could be in Leeds this coming week to see friends and attend Tolkien sessions in person, I will be settling for the next best thing, zooming in from home. Two events occur annually in Leeds, and this year they are both in hybrid formats: the Tolkien Society Seminar on Sunday, July 3, and then a series of papers at the International Medieval Congress from July 4 – 7.

Tolkien Society

Tolkien Society Seminar: Tolkien and the Gothic

The Tolkien Society Seminar is free — more information is here. If you miss registering for the event, you will eventually be able to see the papers on the Society’s YouTube channel. This year’s theme is Tolkien and the Gothic. A keynote will be given by Nick Groom speaking about “Eldritch Tolkien: The Impossible Complexities of a Gothic Middle-earth.” The other presenters are as follows (times are listed on the Tolkien Society Seminar 2022 page).

  • Victoria Holtz, Encountering the Undead: They will Not Leave You Unscathed
  • Mahdî Brecq, Tolkien’s Gothic: a poetic resurgence?
  • Steven Brehe, Speculations: The Influence of Bram Stoker’s Dracula upon Tolkien
  • Sofia Skeva, (Re-)Writing The (Monstrous) Body in 20th Century Fantasy Literature: The Construction of the Stranger in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings
  • Andrew Higgins, ‘Mommie Dearist’ An Exploration of an Intriguing Tolkienian Gothic Crux
  • Duane Watson, “The forest is queer” – The Fantastic and the Gothic in The Lord of the Rings
  • Journee Cotton, The Gothic and Environmental Bioethics: The ‘Creepy’ Bodies of Middle-earth
  • Giovanni Carmine Costabile, “Where now Bucephalus and the proud Eormanric?” – The interplay of Gothic and Classical references as a tacit background behind “The Wanderer”, Tolkien’s Anglo-Saxon source
  • Michael Dunn, Tolkien’s Triptych: Ecological Uncanny, Double Dualism Personified, and the Language of the Literary Gothic
  • Kristine Larsen, Beware Melkors Bearing Gifts: The “Tale of Adanel” as Gothic Fiction

International Medieval Congress

Registration for the IMC closed some time ago, but if you’re interested in seeing what Tolkien scholars are talking about, I’ve included the schedule of papers below. Of course, if you’ve registered, you can take in these sessions online or in person. The full IMC schedule, from July 4 – 7, can be found on the Congress webpage. The following Tolkien sessions were organized by Andrew Higgins and the Centre for Fantasy & the Fantastic, School of Critical Studies, University of Glasgow.

MONDAY JULY 4

J.R.R. Tolkien: Medieval Roots & Modern Branches

  • Andrzej Wicher, An Attempt to Re-Examine the Dialectic of the East and the West in Tolkien’s Selected Works
  • Victoria-Holtz Wodzak, Of Dust Motes, Trees, and Golden Flowers: Tolkien and Duns Scotus’ Haeccitas.
  • Andrew Higgins,, Glossopoeia through Letter Writing: The Role of Early Reader and Author Responses in the Development of the Elvish Languages

Tolkien and Medieval Poets: A Session in Memory of Richard West

  • Andoni Cossio, The Revivalist Critic and the Alliterative Poet: An Unexpected Collaboration
  • James Tauber, Computing the Interlace Structure of The Lord of the Rings
  • Kristine Larsen, ‘Pearls’ of Pearl: Medieval Appropriations in Tolkien’s Mythology

Tolkien as a Gateway to Interdisciplinary Teaching: A Roundtable Discussion
This roundtable discussion will feature talks by teachers on how they have used the works of Tolkien to introduce and engage students with new fields of study and disciplines. Participants include Andrew Higgins, Deidre Dawson, Dimitra Fimi.

WEDNESDAY JULY 6

Borders between Life and Death in Tolkien’s Legendarium

  • Cami Agan, Memories of Borders: On the Borders of Memory – Beleriand as Elegiac Landscape
  • Amy Amendt-Raduege, Beyond the Circles of the World
  • Gaëlle Abaléa, Undead or Undying: Limits of Immortality in Tolkien’s Work

Family, Orientation, Transgression, and Crossing Borders of Middle-earth

  • Deidre Dawson, Tolkien’s Orphaned Heroes
  • Yvette Kisor, Chrononormativity and Queer Time: Crossing Temporal Borders in Tolkien’s Middle-earth
  • Alke Haarsma-Wisselink, ‘Finding out what lies beyond the borders of the Shire’: Applying Tolkien’s Fantastic Texts in and to Madness – The Transgressive Experience of Psychotic Thinking
  • Olivia-Kate Burgham, ‘Lay your head in my lap’: Homoerotic Tension and Possibility on Mordor’s Border in The Lord of the Rings

THURSDAY, JULY 7

Crossing Borders in Middle-earth

  • Aslı Bülbül, Light: The Key to Cross the Spatiotemporal Borders in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Secondary World
  • Sara Brown, Interrogating the Liminal Space: Vampires and Werewolves in Middle-Earth
  • Aurelie Bremont, Time Travel, Astronomy, and Magic Mirrors: How the Borders between Reality and the Otherworld in Middle- Earth Are Influenced by Celtic Mythology and Science (Fiction)

Tolkien talks in May 2022 & reminders for July

02 Monday May 2022

Posted by in Conferences, Medieval, Medievalisms, Research, Tolkien

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Two events for this month will feature online presentations on Tolkien. The first is a free event to be held on Saturday May 7th, the Tolkien at Kalamazoo Symposium. A program and link have not yet been published, but I will post it here as soon as the information is available. [May 4 edit: the pdf program is posted here. If you’re interested in attending, contact Yvette Kisor at ykisor@ramapo.edu]

Next week, the International Congress on Medieval Studies will take place online once again this year. There is a registration fee for this one, which gives you access to papers and various kinds of sessions and book sales as well as recordings of most sessions for two weeks after the conference. You can find more information here. The Congress takes place May 9-14.

And please scroll down for reminders about July’s conference events. You’ll have to register this week for the Leeds medieval conference if you intend to take part!

Below are the sessions on Tolkien taking place at the International Congress on Medieval Studies from the University of Western Michigan in Kalamazoo. An asterisk by the session number indicates that the session will be recorded.

121* Tuesday, May 10, 5:00 p.m. EDT
Medieval Understandings of the Nature of Evil as Depicted by J. R. R. Tolkien

Sponsor: D. B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership, Viterbo Univ. Organizer & Presider: Michael A. Wodzak, Viterbo Univ.

  • Cosmic Catastrophe of History: Augustinian Theology of History and Patristic Angelology in Tolkien’s “Long Defeat” — Edmund Michael Lazzari, Marquette Univ.
  • Dante’s Paradiso and the Fall of Melkor: Tolkien’s Preoccupations with Culpability and Purgation — Michael David Elam, Regent Univ.
  • A Clamorous Unison: Musical Evil in the Middle Ages and the Ainulindalë –Joshua T. Parks, Princeton Theological Seminary

226* Thursday, May 12, 9:00 a.m. EDT
Tolkien and the Medieval Animal

Sponsor: Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic, Univ. of Glasgow
Organizer & Presider: Kristine A. Swank, Univ. of Glasgow

  • Mammoth, Mûmak, and “ The old fireside rhyme of Oliphaunt”: Tolkien’s Contributions to the Medieval Bestiary Tradition — Marc U. Zender, Tulane Univ.
  • From Classical to Medieval: A Reflection on Bats in Tolkien’s Works — Fiammetta Comelli, Univ. degli Studi di Milano
  • Of Foxes and Dancing Bears — John Rosegrant, New Orleans-Birmingham Psychoanalytic Center
  • Tolkien’s Dragons: Sources, Symbols, and Significance — Camilo G. Peralta, Fort Hays State Univ.

275* Thursday, May 12, 7:00 p.m. EDT
J. R. R. Tolkien and Medieval Poets: A Session in Memory of Richard C. West

Sponsors: Tolkien at Kalamazoo; Pearl-Poet Society. Organizer: Christopher Vaccaro, Univ. of Vermont. Presider: Jane Beal, Univ. of La Verne

  • Tolkien and Dante on the Musical Nature of “Sub-creation” — Paul L. Fortunato, Univ. of Houston–Downtown
  • The Lost Roads of Old English Poetry: Dramas of Time Travel in Tolkien’s Works — Anna Smol, Mount St. Vincent Univ.
  • Strange Sounds, Strange Scenes: Alliterative Metre and Personification in J. R. R. Tolkien’s “ The Lay of the Children of Húrin” — Gavin Foster, Dalhousie Univ.
  • Tolkien, Beowulf, and Gawain: The Myth of Alliteration — John R. Holmes, Franciscan Univ. of Steubenville

360 Friday, May 13, 7:00 p.m. EDT
Medieval Tolkien and the Nature of Middle-earth (A Roundtable)

Sponsor: Tolkien at Kalamazoo. Organizer: Yvette Kisor, Ramapo College. Presider: Deidre Dawson, Michigan State Univ.

A roundtable discussion with Edward L. Risden, St. Norbert College; Sutirtho Roy, Univ. of Calcutta; Christopher Vaccaro, Univ. of Vermont; Yvette Kisor; John D. Rateliff, Independent Scholar

421* Saturday, May 14, 5:00 p.m. EDT
New Readings of the Lord of the Rings
Presider: Luke J. Chambers, Indiana Univ.–Bloomington

  • The Fisherman’s Ring of Power: Masculinity, Castration, and the Great Quest in The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings — Consuelo M. Concepcion, Independent Scholar
  • The Dragon is Not an Allegory: Reading Tolkien’s Monsters in Medieval Contexts — Ruthann E. Mowry, Univ. of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign; Cait Coker, Univ. of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign
  • Samwise: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Practical Boethian — Brian McFadden, Texas Tech Univ.
  • Tolkien, Augustinian Theodicy, and Lovecraftian Evil — Perry Neil Harrison, Fort Hays State Univ.

A couple of Tolkien papers will appear in more general sessions:

394* Saturday, May 14, 3:00 p.m. EDT
C. S. Lewis and the Middle Ages I: Dante and the Lewis Circle (In Honor of Marsha Daigle Williamson)

  • Heavenly Models of Desire in Dante, Lewis, and Tolkien — Curtis Gruenler, Hope College [paper withdrawn – May 4 edit]

418* Saturday, May 14, 5:00 p.m. EDT
Medievalism in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Literary and Cinematic Adaptations of Beowulf

  • The Existential Dragon: Adapting Beowulf in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and John Gardner’s Grendel — Andrew Phillip de Carion, Univ. of Houston

Of course, if you have an interest in medieval or medievalism studies, there are hundreds of other sessions to choose from.

Kalamazoo campus swan pond

And looking ahead…..

The Tolkien Society will be holding its Seminar on July 3 with the theme of Tolkien and the Gothic. This is a hybrid event. Registration is now open for free online or in-person attendance (limited to 60 people in person).

The International Medieval Congress at Leeds University will host 7 Tolkien sessions in the program. The conference takes place July 4-7, 2022. This is a hybrid event, enabling online or in-person attendance. Deadline for registration is Friday May 6. As with the other large medieval conference from the University of Western Michigan, there is a fee for registration.

I’ll post the July programs closer to the time of these events.

Save the dates!

31 Monday Jan 2022

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Listening to sounds of the Bodleian in a howling snowstorm.

I sometimes like to listen to the Sounds of the Bodleian Library while working. The soundscapes transport me back to happy days researching in the library, where I hope to spend time again one day. In the meantime, a howling snowstorm is keeping us indoors here in Nova Scotia, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look forward to connecting with people online, dreaming of spring and summer, and listening to some great ideas on Tolkien in upcoming seminars.

Mythopoeic Society logo

First up is the Online Midwinter Seminar on The Inklings and Horror: Fantasy’s Dark Corners, sponsored by a Mythopoeic Society group, taking place this coming weekend on February 4th and 5th. You can see a list of speakers and topics on the Mythopoeic Society blog, including a number of papers on Tolkien. Friday night is reserved mainly for social activities, and the presentations are tentatively scheduled for Saturday. You can register for the seminar here. This is the first of midwinter seminars that the Mythopoeic Society is hoping to hold in the future.

Tolkien in Vermont conference

18th Annual Tolkien in Vermont Conference, April 2, 2022. The theme is the idea of history and the keynote speaker will be Dr. Gergely Nagy. This event is planned as a hybrid conference, with in-person attendance at the University of Vermont as well as online participation. The schedule of speakers has not yet been announced, but I assume that more information will be forthcoming on the Tolkien in Vermont Facebook page.

The Popular Culture Association online conference will take place April 13-16, 2022. The final schedule has not yet been posted, but we do know that the Tolkien Studies area will have the following sessions: 1. Literary and Cultural Approaches to Tolkien; 2. Queer and Critical Race Approaches to Tolkien; 3. Multi-Disciplinary Approaches to Tolkien; 4. Roundtable on Teaching Tolkien; 5. Race, Racisms, and Tolkien; 6. Religion, Spirituality, and Tolkien; 7. A Roundtable on the Future of Tolkien Studies. Each session will have 4 or 5 speakers. I’ll have more details when the final program is out. The deadline for early registration is February 11.

Kalamazoo campus swan pond

International Congress on Medieval Studies, University of Western Michigan, May 9-14, 2022. This conference is online once again this year, with plans to move to a hybrid model in 2023. A Sneak Preview of the program has now been posted on the conference homepage. Sessions on Tolkien include: 1. Medieval Understandings of the Nature of Evil as Depicted by Tolkien; 2. Tolkien and the Medieval Animal; 3. Tolkien and Medieval Poets: A Session in Memory of Richard West; 4. Medieval Tolkien and the Nature of Middle-earth (a Roundtable); 5. New Readings of The Lord of the Rings. Each of these sessions includes 3 or 4 presenters. Other sessions on medievalisms also include single presentations on Tolkien. I’ll post more details after the final program is published. You can find registration and other information on the Congress website.

Just before the International Congress on Medieval Studies, the Tolkien at Kalamazoo group sponsors a one-day symposium, to be held this year on May 7. This year’s theme is “Missing Mothers.” I expect more details to become available soon about this event. One place to find out more information as it becomes available is at the Tolkien at Kalamazoo Symposium 2022 link on the Tolkienists.org site, which includes emails for the organizers.

Of course, once summer arrives there will be more: in July, the Tolkien Society Seminar, the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds, and the Once and Future Fantasies conference at the University of Glasgow; in August, the Mythopoeic Society, and, in September, Oxonmoot. But for now, I’ll work on the papers I’m scheduled to give this spring (at PCA and ICMS) and I’ll look forward to connecting with Tolkien scholars in our virtual world.

Fall term and summer reviews

18 Monday Oct 2021

Posted by in Conferences, Fan studies, Medievalisms, Research, Talks on Tolkien, Tolkien

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I am halfway into the fall term — always a busy time with meetings, grading, and class preparations. It’s hard to find time for research — or blogging. But one thing that I like to do whenever I have a half hour or so is to review videos of past conference presentations or listen to chats with other Tolkien scholars and fans.

One benefit of the move to online or hybrid conferences has been that we have in many cases a recording of the talks that were given. If you missed one, or if you just want to refresh your memory, there is plenty to listen to.

Tolkien Society logo

The Tolkien Society summer seminar, held July 3-4, offers 15 talks by Tolkien scholars here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoyx2jXs6Le_MelDj_rJsmiYSYQBeVYxQ

Mythcon 51 logo

Mythcon 51, held July 31-August 1, has posted 15 talks about Tolkien and more on other fantasy writers. https://dc.swosu.edu/mythcon/mc51/

Tolkien at Kalamazoo Symposium, May 8. I have previously linked to my talk and 6 other recorded presentations that were given on that day here: https://annasmol.net/2021/05/24/tolkien-symposium-2021-tolkien-the-playwright/

Other recorded talks for registered attendees. Those who registered for certain conferences that included Tolkien sessions, such as the International Congress on Medieval Studies (Western Michigan University) in May, the Popular Culture Association conference in June, the International Medieval Congress (Leeds) in July, or Oxonmoot Online in September, will have had access to recorded talks for a certain time after each conference. Only the Oxonmoot talks are still available to registered delegates.

Tolkien Experience Podcast logo

And if you’re not feeling up to listening to scholarly presentations, you can always tune in to the Tolkien Experience Podcast, which features a mix of scholars and fans chatting about their experiences with reading Tolkien’s works and what they mean to them today. I was interviewed by my friend, Dr. Sara Brown, in September. You can listen to my interview, TEP #38, here. Or select from a list of recent interviews here: https://luke-shelton.com/tolkienexperiencepodcast/

And more talks are coming up!

The Tolkien Society Autumn Seminar will be held online on November 6. The theme is Translating and Illustrating Tolkien. Registration is free and still open: https://www.tolkiensociety.org/events/tolkien-society-autumn-seminar/

And something new to add to the roster: the Mythopoeic Society is sponsoring an online winter seminar on The Inklings and Horror: Fantasy’s Dark Corners on February 4-5. The Call for Papers is open until November 15 if you’re interested in presenting. You can find more information here: https://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/ows-2022.htm

Upcoming Tolkien conference sessions (Tolkien Society Seminar and IMC Leeds)

27 Sunday Jun 2021

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These sessions are not for those who rush to join bandwagons based on meaningless politicized terms such as “woke” or who advance the anti-intellectualism prevalent in groups where any academic is suspect, and expertise (whether of academics or fans) is ridiculed.  These sessions, as always, are for open discussions and debates by faculty, students, independent scholars, and fans who are interested in the complexities of Tolkien’s works and how they are received, enjoyed, and critiqued around the world.

I make these prefatory comments because of a recent backlash against the Tolkien Society’s free online Summer Seminar theme, Tolkien and Diversity. Of the various incoherent negative comments made on social media, some of which just mock paper titles without knowing what will be said in the presentations, I can discern a couple of repeated objections: a few critics immediately assume the intent is to “tear down” Tolkien or to disavow his Catholic beliefs. Because I have participated in Tolkien studies conferences for years, I feel confident in saying that these are not the intentions of the organizers.

This doesn’t mean that Tolkien will be treated as a saint (some people literally believe he should be sainted!). It also doesn’t mean that Tolkien “the man” will be the last word on his works. Yes, scholars are certainly interested in what he had to say, and that includes how he developed his ideas or changed his mind or contradicted himself; but he does not represent a static set of rigid ideas, as some of the objectors seem to believe.* In any case, what Tolkien has written has gone out into the world and, like any influential literature, it is being read, interpreted, used — for good and for ill — in various ways by readers around the globe. Trying to understand this about Tolkien’s work, as with any other works of literature, is a standard part of literary research, which leads to a better understanding of our contemporary culture.

The Seminar is free, so anyone can actually listen to the ideas being presented, decide if they agree or not, ask questions and discuss — or if they want to express their views in more detail, they can propose a paper for the next meeting in order to present a coherent and informed discussion.  Of course, no one is being forced to listen to any new ideas or learn any new facts; we are all free to read Tolkien as we wish.

Tolkien Society Summer Seminar, July 3-4

The Tolkien Society Summer Seminar will take place online on July 3-4.  For more information and a list of presentations, see here.

International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, July 5-9

The Tolkien Society Seminar usually takes place a day or two before the International Medieval Congress, normally held at the University of Leeds, but conducted online this year. The IMC typically features a number of Tolkien sessions. This conference requires registration and a fee; unfortunately, it may be too late to register at this point.

Check out the list of Tolkien-related presentations, including paper abstracts, at Tolkienists.org.

I’m looking forward to speaking about Tolkien’s alliterative poetry in “The Homecoming” on Thursday, 8 July, in the “Medieval Roots and Modern Branches” session. 

*This isn’t the first time, or the last, I am sure, in which I cite and recommend Verlyn Flieger’s paper, “The Arch and the Keystone” for anyone interested in considering Tolkien’s complex views. The essay is available for download from Mythlore here: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol38/iss1/3/.

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Tolkien Conference Season, May-July 2021

26 Monday Apr 2021

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Conference season is upon us again, and just like last year’s sessions, the meetings I’m interested in are being held online.  While nothing can replace sitting on a university patio in the summer sun drinking mead with new and old conference friends, we’ll have to make do with virtual reality.  As I’ve said before, the one advantage is that we can listen to many more papers and “attend” many more conferences than we typically would have done, especially for those who do not have travel funding to go far afield to specialist meetings.

I think that in a fit of overcompensating for last year’s pandemic lockdown and research slowdown, I have offered to give three conference papers and one roundtable discussion this spring and summer.  In order to make sure I remember where I want to be and when, I’ve compiled a list of conference sessions on Tolkien that I’m either involved in or just interested in attending from May to July. 

Kalamazoo campus swan pond

Tolkien Symposium, Kalamazoo, Michigan

Coming up are the sessions which are usually held in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which begin with the one-day Tolkien Symposium, sponsored by the Tolkien at Kalamazoo group. These sessions will be held on May 8 from 10:30 a.m. EDT to 5:00 p.m. EDT, with 9 papers, rounding up the day with a musical performance.  To see the full schedule, go to Tolkienists.org. The Symposium is free; email Dr. Christopher Vaccaro for the link [Christopher.Vaccaro@uvm.edu].

My paper is scheduled on May 8. Did you know that Tolkien published a play? And that it is his only piece of historical fiction? My talk is on “Tolkien the Playwright” and deals with his verse drama, “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son.”

International Congress on Medieval Studies, University of Western Michigan

There are a number of sessions on Tolkien and medievalism at this conference, to be held May 10 – 15. Registration is required and so is the payment of a fee, scaled to your income. Each session includes two or more papers; below are the session topics and dates and times.  For details about the presenters and their paper titles, go to the Tolkienists.org site  or search the program and register at the ICMS site.

Monday, May 10, 1:00 p.m. EDT
Tolkien and Manuscript Studies

Monday, May 10, 5:00 p.m. EDT
Deadscapes: Wastelands, Necropoli, and Other Tolkien-Inspired Places of Death, Decay, and Corruption (A Panel Discussion)

Tuesday, May 11, 9:00 a.m EDT
Christopher Tolkien, Medievalist (a roundtable)

Tuesday, May 11, 3 p.m. EDT
Tolkien’s Chaucer

Thursday, May 13, 11:00 a.m. EDT
Tolkien and Se Wyrm

Thursday, May 13, 3 p.m. EDT
Tolkien’s Medicinal Medieval World: Illness and Healing in Middle-earth

Friday, May 14, 1 p.m. EDT
Medieval World-Building: Tolkien, His Precursors and Legacies

Saturday, May 15, 11:00 a.m. EDT
Tolkien’s Paratexts, Appendices, Annals, and Marginalia (a roundtable)

Popular Culture Association

From June 2 – 4, we have the PCA (Popular Culture Association) conference.  Conference registration for non-presenters will open on May 1st here.  The Tolkien Studies Area is organized by Robin Reid.

Tolkien Studies I:  Environmental Ethics and Leadership Theory in Tolkien’s Legendarium
Wednesday, June 2, 11:00 a.m. – 12:20  EDT

  • Amber Lehning. Elf-Songs and Orc-Talk: Environmental Ethics in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, from Beowulf to Peter Jackson
  • Michael Joseph Urick. Theories of Leadership in Middle-earth
  • James Eric Siburt.  Rendering Visible an Understanding of Power in Leadership in Tolkien’s Creation Mythology: Ainulindalë and Akallabêth

Tolkien Studies II:  Multi-Disciplinary Approaches to Tolkien’s Legendarium
Wednesday, June 2, 12:30-1:50 p.m. EDT

  • Meaghan Scott.  The Nimrodel and Silverlode: Lothlórien as a Secondary World
  • Rebecca Power, Tolkien’s Penchant for Alliteration: Using XML to Analyze The Lay of Leithian
  • Anna Smol,  Tolkien’s New Old English Genre: “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth”
  • Kristine Larsen, “I am no man”: Game of Thrones’ Lyanne Mormont as Borrowed Tolkienian Canonicity

On June 2, I’ll be talking about what critic Chris Jones calls “New Old English” poetry and how Tolkien’s “Homecoming” and other poems can be viewed as part of an alliterative verse history of the twentieth century.

Tolkien Studies III:  A Roundtable on Tolkien Reception Studies
Wednesday, June 2, 2:00 – 3:20 p.m. EDT
Presenters: Maria Alberto, Cordeliah G. Logsdon, Dawn Walls-Thumma, Cait Coker, Robin Anne Reid

Tolkien Studies IV:  Race and Racisms in Tolkien’s Secondary and Our Primary Worlds
Thursday, June 3, 3:30-4:50 p.m. EDT

  • Robert Tally.  More Dangerous and Less Wise: Racial Hierarchies and Cultural Difference in Tolkien’s World
  • Alastair Whyte.  Scales of malice: The banal evil of Middle-earth’s tyrant-history
  • Craig N. Franson. Where Shadows Lie”: Middle-earth and Neo-fascist Metapolitics
  • Robin Anne Reid.  Race in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings And in Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor

Tolkien Studies V:  Tolkien’s Fandoms
Thursday, June 3, 5:00-6:20 p.m. EDT

  • M. Lee Alexander. “Heroes of the North”: Tolkien and Finnish Fandom
  • Dawn Walls-Thumma. The Pillar and the Vastness: A Longitudinal View of the Tolkien Fanfiction Fandom
  • Cordeliah G. Logsdon. “What care I for the hands of a king?“: Tolkien, Fanfiction, and Narratives of the Self
  • Maria Alberto.  Mathom Economies? Fan Gift Culture and A Tolkien Fic Exchange Event 

Tolkien Studies VI:  A Roundtable on the Future of Tolkien Studies
Friday, June 4, 11:00-12:20 EDT
Presenters:  Craig N Franson, Rebecca Power, James Eric Siburt, Amber Lehning, Anna Smol, Kristine Larsen

On June 4, I’ll be taking part in this roundtable to discuss the study of Tolkien and 20th and 21st century poetry.

Tolkien Studies VII:  The Council of Tolkien Studies
Friday, June 4, 12:30-1:50 p.m. EDT
Presenter: Robin Reid.

Tolkien Society

Tolkien Society Summer Seminar

Looking ahead to July, we have the weekend Tolkien Seminar sponsored by the Tolkien Society, which always takes place just before the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds. This year, the Tolkien Society has expanded its Seminar series to include three seminars; one has already taken place last February, and the Summer Seminar is scheduled for July 3-4. The theme of the Summer Seminar is Tolkien and Diversity. The call for papers has just passed, so we still have to wait to see the schedule, but the place to keep up to date is on the Summer Seminar page. These talks will be free for all.

International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds

The IMC at Leeds will be online this year again. Registration is required, with a deadline of May 10, and the full program is available here. The organizer of the Tolkien sessions, to be held July 8-9, is Dr. Andrew Higgins, and you can find details and updates about the Tolkien papers on his blog, Dr. Wotan’s Musings.

J.R.R. Tolkien: Medieval Roots and Modern Branches
Thursday, July 8. 14:15-15:45 BST

  • Jan A. Kozak. Borders on the Otherworld: Warrior Maidens, Mounds, and Ancestral Swords in The Lord of the Rings and in the Old Norse Hervar Saga
  • Brian Egede-Pedersen. Flocking to the Serpent Banner – Decolonising The Lord of the Ring‘s Workshop’s Table-Top War Game
  • Joel Merriner. The Raven and the Map: Decoding Gyözö Vida’s A Gyürük Ura
  • Anna Smol. Tolkien’s Alliterative Styles in “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son”

My talk on July 8 will analyze Tolkien’s expert composition of alliterative verse in various styles, from colloquial and informal to highly stylized verse, following the Sievers scheme of alliterative patterns.

Tolkien and Diversity: A Round Table Discussion
Thursday, July 8. 19:00-20:30 BST
Participants: Deidre Dawson, Sultana Raza, Christopher Vaccaro    

Medieval Climates, Cosmologies and EcoSystems in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien (I)
Friday, July 9. 14:15-15:45 BST

  • Andrzej Wicher. The Importance of Geographical Directions in the construction of Tolkien’s Middle-earth
  • Aurelie Bremont. King Elessar in Middle-earth: Strawberry Fields Forever?
  • Kristine Larsen. “Carry on My Wayward Sonne (and Moon)”: Common Cosmological Quirks in the Norse Fimbul-Winter and Tolkien’s Early Legendarium
  • Gaëlle Abalea. Political Climate in the “The Fall of Numenor”

Medieval Climates, Cosmologies and EcoSystems in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien (II)
Friday, July 9. 16:30-18:00 BST

  • Helen Lawson. The Myth of the Mother – Retracing the Roots of Motherhood in Tolkien’s Decaying Middle-earth
  • Sara Brown. Situating Middle-earth: Reconsidering Tolkien’s Relationship with the Landscape
  • Andrew Higgins. Language Invention, Climate and Landscapes in Tolkien’s Gnomish Lexicon
  • Sultana Raza. How Alan Lee’s Landscapes Outline the Climate of Plot and Tolkien’s Mind-scapes

There will also be a Tolkien Sessions business meeting at some point during the conference week.

Kalamazoo spring 2014

Trying to work out time zones in your area? This has become an important question with these online sessions around the world. I have found this Time Zone Converter to be very handy when trying to figure out what time of day a virtual paper in another country will be given, and you can find lots of other guides and converters online.

Tolkien conference sessions don’t end with the IMC at Leeds in early July. There is more to come later this summer and fall — such as Mythcon and Oxonmoot. Stay tuned for more details later this summer, and feel free to point out in the comments other conferences this May – July season that you’re interested in.

Virtual IMC to include 2 Tolkien sessions

24 Wednesday Jun 2020

Posted by in Conferences, Medieval, Medievalisms, Tolkien

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The regular International Medieval Congress in Leeds is cancelled, but it’s being replaced by a pared-down virtual IMC, or vIMC. While many presentations have been withdrawn, there is still a healthy program of sessions from Monday to Friday, July 6 – 10 being offered online. Please note that registration is free but closes this Friday, June 26.

Although it’s still a draft program that may change, currently two Tolkien sessions remain, with a truly international roster of speakers. And of course, the times listed are in British time, so you’ll have to calculate the equivalent in your own time zone.

Monday 6 July from 14:15-15:45:

BORDERS IN TOLKIEN’S MEDIEVALISM, I
Organiser: Andrew Higgins, Independent Scholar, Brighton
Moderator: Kristine Larsen, Geological Sciences Department, Central Connecticut State University

The Liminality of Tolkien’s Non-Human Species
Andrzej Wicher, Zakład Dramatu i Dawnej Literatury Angielskiej, Uniwersytet Łódzki

Warrior Maidens, Mounds, and Ancestral Swords in Lord of the Rings and in the Old Norse Hervarar Saga
Jan A. Kozák, Institutt for lingvistiske, litterære og estetiske studier, Universitetet i Bergen

Foraging for Sources: Sir Orfeo as the Origin of Medieval Romance Topoi Present in Mirkwood
Andoni Cossio, Facultad de Letras, Universidad del Pais Vasco – Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, Vitoria-Gasteiz

Monday 6 July 16:30-18:00:

BORDERS IN TOLKIEN’S MEDIEVALISM, II
Organiser: Andrew Higgins, Independent Scholar, Brighton
Moderator: Alaric Hall, Institute for Medieval Studies / School of English, University of Leeds

The Walls of the World and the Voyage of the Evening Star: The Complex Borders of Tolkien’s Medieval Geocentric Cosmology
Kristine Larsen, Geological Sciences Department, Central Connecticut State University

The Limits of Subcreation
Lars Konzack, Institut for Kommunikation, Københavns Universitet

A Preliminary History of Deadly Splinters
Victoria Holtz Wodzak, School of Humanities, Viterbo University, Wisconsin

Registration will give you access to lots of other sessions on diverse medieval topics. And make sure to check out the book fair, which will have discounts from a number of publishers, as well as the other markets and presentations that will soon be confirmed. As registration is free, this is a great time to experience the conference for those who wouldn’t normally be able to attend, and it’s at least some consolation for those who were originally planning to go.

“It depends on what you mean by use”: teaching and learning in the arts now

07 Sunday Jun 2020

Posted by in Fan studies, Medieval, Medievalisms, Research, Teaching, Tolkien

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I was going to write to celebrate Tolkien Reading Day (March 25) as I usually do, with a post on “Leaf by Niggle,” one of the texts recommended by the Tolkien Society for this year’s theme of Nature vs. Industry. However, as we were approaching Tolkien Reading Day, COVID-19 cases started to pop up in Canada, with the result that my university closed on-campus classes on March 13th, and by the 19th they had entirely locked down the campus. So within a matter of days, we had to shift our last three and half weeks of classes and three weeks of exams into virtual operations.

Those weeks were chaotic and stressful, and a Tolkien Reading Day post was abandoned. Students were moving home, sometimes to far-distant time zones; others were taking care of children who were out of school or daycare; some were dealing with the sick and worst of all, with the death of family or friends. Some had no Internet access, or nothing more than a cell phone with limited data to try to connect to their online classes. Most lost their jobs. We missed seeing our students in person, especially our graduating students who would be leaving without an in-person good-bye celebration.

As faculty, we had to rethink how to teach course concepts online and quickly learn new technologies within a matter of days, while triaging student problems. Many faculty had additional challenges at home with childcare or having to share one home computer. Relatively speaking, though, my position has been a privileged one indeed. I have a home and the companionship of my husband while in lockdown (and we each have our own laptops to work on); I can work from home in a safe job with a continuing salary. My adult children, while never far from our minds, are managing (for now) to get by independently. And yet —

And yet, it has been an unsettling and anxious time, filled with uncertainty. Among other concerns, the research and writing that I would normally be immersed in at this time have been relegated to irregular jabs at getting going. My ambitious research project recedes further and further into the distance.

Niggle was a painter. Not a very successful one, partly because he had many other things to do. Most of these things he thought were a nuisance; but he did them fairly well, when he could not get out of them: which (in his opinion) was far too often.”

(“Leaf by Niggle,” page 93)

I won’t push an allegorical equivalence with Niggle much farther, although as the banner on top of this blog reveals, I do enjoy and identify with parts of that story, and I would dearly love to learn the secret of his time management lessons without having to go to the same “workhouse.” However, as my attention shifted to our new pandemic living conditions, I was brought back to an important element of Tolkien’s story, the value of art.

I think he was a silly little man,” said Councillor Tompkins. “Worthless, in fact; no use to Society at all.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Atkins, who was nobody of importance, just a schoolmaster. “I am not so sure: it depends on what you mean by use.”
“No practical or economic use,” said Tompkins. “I dare say he could have been made into a serviceable cog of some sort, if you schoolmasters knew your business.”

(“Leaf by Niggle,” page 116)

In the midst of this pandemic anxiety, chaos, and for some, even boredom, how often have people turned to the arts? Movies; tv shows; livestreams of theatre, opera, dance, concerts; Zoom choirs and songs and YouTube parodies; online communities sharing readings; political graffiti or a child’s sidewalk chalk drawings, books and storytelling — the arts have provided us with comfort, distraction, entertainment, enlightenment, information, and calls to action. The fact that most of the artists producing these arts are now out of jobs while society eats up their work should lead us to consider the “use” of art in our Tompkins-led world. How do we use art? How do we use artists?

“It depends on what you mean by use” says the schoolteacher, who is considered “nobody of importance,” and who pushes back (albeit feebly) against Tompkins, who criticizes the teacher for not factory-producing people as “serviceable cog[s]” for some larger economic machine. 

It is shocking how often that view is expressed in our Primary World, even in my own world of the university. We have witnessed in numerous places professors being considered simply as “content providers” to students who are imagined as empty buckets – fill them all with the same information, and we’re done; they are “educated”; then churn them out the assembly line into a job. Putting our “content” into online format is easy, as one Tompkins-administrator told a group of students in my university a mere five days after the decision to move classes online, assuring them in her usual perky, uninformed style that everything was fine — “Of course your professors have everything all set online by now!” — completely oblivious to the careful thought that needs to go into teaching effectively in a digital world.

How often have students taking an Arts degree, either to learn to produce and/or to analyze the arts, been asked, “what use is that?” Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m glad when our B.A. students can get – and they do get – good jobs, despite popular misconceptions that Arts graduates don’t do as well as, say, Business students. But even within my university, a Business professor recently wrote in a university-wide document, citing reports by a national bank, that one of the main goals of higher education was “to produce business leaders of the future.” Tompkins is everywhere.

Thankfully, many of my colleagues countered that they believe, instead, that the aim of a university education is to encourage the development of socially responsible global citizens. Yes, we need scientists and social scientists to help solve our problems, but we also need artists and people educated in the humanities to help analyze our world and communicate some truths. Arts courses aim to give students a broad, multifaceted understanding of the world they live in and how it came to be that way. And these courses, at least where I teach, try to do that by having teachers engaging with individual students, exchanging ideas with them, developing their understanding and our own understanding as teachers as we analyze the world together beyond our doors, using novels, poetry, speeches, essays, plays, films, dance, music – the stuff of the arts, that illuminate the world for us.  

And let me emphasize together. Good teachers are always learning along with their students. We don’t just dump our “content” onto a webpage and call that “teaching.” And I, like many other teachers, have to continually remind myself that I have to keep learning, to look beyond the comfort and security of my home office to read, watch, and listen to what is going on in our society, and to question continually how it affects what we do and what we teach.

And right now, with protests against systemic racism around the world, in the midst of a global pandemic, our society, while in dire need of many things, also could use the transformative power of the arts – the analysis, commentary, expression, solace, and communication that artists and those educated in the arts can provide.

So yes, “It depends on what you mean by use.”

Work Cited
“Leaf by Niggle.” Tree and Leaf, including Mythopoeia. HarperCollins, 2001, pp. 93-118.

Floral drawing by Tolkien

I have a lot of learning to do in the next few months. Here are some resources that I’ve been using as starting points for my particular areas of interest:

Tolkien studies: 

“Race in Tolkien Studies: A Bibliographic Essay” by Robin Anne Reid. In Tolkien and Alterity, edited by Christopher Vaccaro and Yvette Kisor, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 33-74.

Medieval studies:

“Race and Medieval Studies: A Partial Bibliography” by Jonathan Hsy and Julie Orlemanski. postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies, vol. 8, 2017, pp.500–531. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-017-0072-0. Also available here: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057%2Fs41280-017-0072-0.pdf

“’Black Death’ Matters: A Modern Take on a Medieval Pandemic” by M. Rambaran-Olm. Medium.com, 5 June 2020.

Fan studies:

Lori Morimoto, @acafanmom on Twitter.  This thread includes reading suggestions on decentering whiteness in fan studies.  https://twitter.com/acafanmom/status/1268873028370382849?s=20

Canadian writers and issues:

A Different Booklist: A Canadian Multicultural Bookstore Specializing in Literature from the African and Caribbean Diaspora and the Global South. https://adifferentbooklist.com/

“35 Books to Read for National Indigenous History Month.” CBC.ca https://www.cbc.ca/books/35-books-to-read-for-national-indigenous-history-month-1.5585489

Adaptation as Analysis, part 3: “Misty Mountains” video

09 Monday Mar 2020

Posted by in Fan studies, Medievalisms, pedagogy, Teaching, Tolkien

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This is the third post showcasing the work of some of my students in my Tolkien and medievalism class this year. You can find Part 1 and Part 2 at these links. As I’ve explained in previous posts, I give my students the option of creating an adaptation in any medium of Tolkien’s work or of a medieval text and then writing an analysis of what they have done.

Today’s feature is by Rebecca Foster, whose video, “Misty Mountains,” appears here with her permission. Rebecca takes as her inspiration the song “Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold” in The Hobbit. She wanted to represent how the song takes Bilbo into his imagination, which she illustrates with her watercolours to accompany the poem. Her essay discussed Tolkien’s ideas on imagination, the relation between Primary and Secondary worlds, and included research on Tolkien’s artwork — perhaps you’ll detect his influence!

“Misty Mountains.” Copyright Rebecca Foster. Posted with permission.

Tolkien the Playwright

24 Monday Feb 2020

Posted by in Conferences, Medievalisms, Old English, Publications, Research, Tolkien

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We don’t often think of Tolkien as a playwright. Fantasy novelist — of course. Poet, scholar, artist – yes. But we shouldn’t forget that Tolkien also wrote one published play, “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son” – let’s call it “The Homecoming” for short – which was produced by BBC Radio and has been read or performed at various times.

Tolkien wrote other plays, though we don’t have the manuscripts any more, to my knowledge. As a young man, he wrote plays as holiday entertainments when spending time with his Incledon relatives; he probably wrote a farce, Cherry Farm, in 1911 and in the following year, The Bloodhound, the Chef, and the Suffragette (also playing one of the parts).  He performed in plays while at school: in 1910 acting as the Inspector in Aristophanes’ play The Birds – in Greek! and also in Greek the following year, taking the role of Hermes in Aristophanes’ Peace. Near the end of 1911, his performance as Mrs. Malaprop in Richard Sheridan’s The Rivals was praised as “excellent in every way” (Scull and Hammond, Reader’s Guide 313-17).

Tolkien as Hermes in 1911
Tolkien (centre) as Hermes in Aristophanes’ Peace, 1911. Photo from the cover of Tolkien Studies, vol. 11, 2014. The full photograph is reproduced on page 9 in John Garth’s article in that volume.

And of course, all of his debating experience, often in humourous speeches, during his years at King Edward’s and then at Oxford would require a sense of the dramatic in taking up a persona and a position in argument (See the Scull and Hammond Chronology for reports of these debates).  John Garth surveys these and other of Tolkien’s early comedic and parodic compositions, pointing out:

By thus limbering up in his early exercises as a writer, he was later able to apply the same skills—more finely tuned, of course—to the most serious topics and with the utmost gravity.”

(Garth 11)

Even later in life, Tolkien had a flair for the dramatic. Picture him at the Oxford Summer Diversions in 1938 reciting from memory Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale. John Bowers, in his recently published book Tolkien’s Lost Chaucer, imagines the scene:

On the merrymaking occasion in summer 1938, Tolkien strode upon the stage costumed as Chaucer in a green robe, a turban, and fake whiskers parted in the middle like the forked beard shown in early portraits like Ellesmere’s.” 

(Bowers 208)

The performance received good reviews in the Oxford Mail, and in the following year, Tolkien returned to perform Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale, this time producing a shortened and bowdlerized version of the tale for his performance (Bowers 208-211).  The poet John Masefield, one of the organizers of the event, described Tolkien’s dramatic abilities:

Professor Tolkien knows more about Chaucer than any living man and sometimes tells the Tales superbly, inimitably, just as though he were Chaucer returned.”

(quoted in Bowers 209)
Geoffrey Chaucer portrait
Tolkien in the 1930s

Above: Geoffrey Chaucer portrait and Tolkien in the 1940s (as close as I could get to the actual date of his performance). You’ll have to imagine Tolkien’s Chaucer costume! Tolkien image from The Guardian, 22 March 2014.

Tolkien’s recitations of Chaucer aren’t the only performances that his audiences remember. His biographer Humphrey Carpenter reports how he used to start his lectures declaiming the opening lines of Beowulf in Old English (137-38). Although students complained that during lectures he mumbled and was hard to follow, these moments of dramatic performance left striking impressions.

In other words, Tolkien had experience in writing and performing dramatic pieces, and I think that he put those skills to good use in “The Homecoming.”

So why don’t we usually think of Tolkien as a playwright? I can think of several reasons. For one, we only have one publication of his in this genre, easily overlooked in the volume of fiction, poetry, letters, and essays that he wrote.

I also think that there’s a tendency to view “The Homecoming” as alliterative poetry for two voices – more like a poetic dialogue not meant for performance on a stage. I would disagree based on the manuscript evidence, but my reasons will have to wait for another time.

Maybe another reason is that “The Homecoming,” inspired by the Old English poem “The Battle of Maldon,” first appeared in a scholarly journal, Essays and Studies, in 1953. Medievalists have been interested mainly in the short essay titled “Ofermod” that Tolkien appended to the play, which deals with “The Battle of Maldon,” and compares it to two other medieval texts, Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. But medieval scholars have not, in general, examined the play as a play.

Finally, we might not think of Tolkien as a playwright because of the negative comments that he made about drama in various letters and in his appendix to “On Fairy-Stories.” In that essay, for example, he claims that drama cannot adequately represent a fantasy world, but whether we agree or not, we should note that “The Homecoming” is different from Tolkien’s other writing. It’s not part of his Middle-earth Secondary World but is based on the aftermath of a battle that took place in 991 according to early English historical chronicles. “The Homecoming” is a work of historical fiction as well as being a play.

The play is now most readily available in the volume Tree and Leaf, tucked in after “On Fairy-Stories,” “Mythopoeia,” and “Leaf by Niggle.”

Tolkien certainly had definite ideas about how the play should be performed on BBC Radio, as his letters tell us, though he was dissatisfied with the BBC production that aired in 1954, with a rebroadcast in 1955. He recorded his own version at home in his study, distinguishing between the two characters’ voices and adding in his own sound effects. A copy of that recording was given out at the Tolkien Centenary Conference in 1992 (Scull & Hammond, Reader’s Guide 547). But you don’t need a copy of that tape to experience Tolkien’s voice dramatizations. Just listen to his reading of the “Riddles in the Dark” chapter from The Hobbit. He does a pretty good job of performing the roles of Bilbo and especially Gollum.

Above: listen to Tolkien’s voicing of Gollum in his reading of “Riddles in the Dark”

Book cover: "Something Has Gone Crack": New Perspectives on J.R.R. Tolkien in the Great War
“Something Has Gone Crack”: New Perspectives on J.R.R. Tolkien in the Great War, edited by Janet Brennan Croft and Annika Röttinger, Walking Tree Publishers, 2019.

It must be pretty clear that I find Tolkien’s play very interesting; in fact, it’s the topic of my current research. I’ve written about “The Homecoming” as a World War One work in my recently published essay, “Bodies in War: Medieval and Modern Tensions in ‘The Homecoming’” in the collection “Something Has Gone Crack”: New Perspectives on J.R.R. Tolkien in the Great War. There, my thesis can be summarized in this way:

Like Tolkien’s better-known works of fiction, HBBS addresses issues of war and heroism that are relevant to a modern writer who is transforming his past experiences into fiction, and as is not uncommon with Tolkien, doing so through the lens of medieval literature.”

(Smol 264)

What currently interests me in “The Homecoming” is the skilful handling of alliterative metre in the play. Yes, this is a play in alliterative verses, which may sound old-fashioned and stilted, but Tolkien’s knowledge of and handling of alliterative verses is, I think, a tour de force in his creation of different styles in a demanding medium. If you’re able to attend the International Medieval Congress in Leeds , you can hear me talking about “Tolkien’s Alliterative Styles in The Homecoming” on Monday, July 6, 11:15, session 104. Look for an article as well, coming soon, I hope!

“Tolkien’s Alliterative Styles in The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth” Session 104, International Medieval Congress, Leeds, July 6, 2020.

I’d love to know in the comments if you’ve read “The Homecoming” and what you think of it. Have you ever heard or seen it performed?

Works Cited

Bowers, John M. Tolkien’s Lost Chaucer. Oxford UP, 2019.

Carpenter, Humphrey. J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography. Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

Garth, John. “’The road from adaptation to invention’: How Tolkien Came to the Brink of Middle-earth in 1914.” Tolkien Studies, vol. 11, 2014, pp. 1-44.

Scull, Christina and Wayne Hammond. J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide. Reader’s Guide and Chronology. Revised and Expanded Edition. HarperCollins, 2017.

Smol, Anna. “Bodies in War: Medieval and Modern Tensions in ‘The Homecoming’.” “Something Has Gone Crack”: New Perspectives on J.R.R. Tolkien in the Great War, edited by Janet Brennan Croft and Annika Röttinger, Walking Tree Publishers, 2019, pp. 263-83.

Tolkien, J.R.R. “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son.” Tree and Leaf, HarperCollins, 2001, pp. 121-150.

As always, if you are an independent scholar (i.e. you do not have an institutional affiliation) and do not have access to some of these resources, please send me an email and I will try to provide private research copies if possible.