Anna Smol: A Single Leaf

Category: Talks on Tolkien

  • Fall term and summer reviews

    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…

  • Talks on Tolkien II: Dimitra Fimi on Tolkien & Childhood Studies

    This week’s talk by Dimitra Fimi applies concepts from childhood studies to Tolkien’s fiction. She begins by pointing out that the concept of childhood is a social construction that varies in different cultures and times, and then goes on to examine Tolkien’s ideas about  childhood in  “Laws and Customs of the Eldar,” The Children of…

  • Talks on Tolkien II: Patrick Curry on Enchantment & Hypermodernity

    This week, I turn to the work of Patrick Curry, best known to Tolkien readers as the author of Defending Middle-earth: Tolkien, Myth and Modernity (revised edition Houghton Mifflin, 2004) and Deep Roots in a Time of Frost: Essays on Tolkien (Walking Tree 2014); his publications also include works such as Ecological Ethics: An Introduction…

  • Talks on Tolkien II: Irina Metzler on Tolkien & Disability Studies

    Continuing in this summer series of Talks on Tolkien II, in which I’d like to highlight pre-recorded talks on new books or on different disciplinary approaches to studying Tolkien, I turn to Irina Metzler’s presentation at the 2016 Tolkien Seminar in Leeds. Dr. Metzler outlines some of the basic concepts in the growing academic field…

  • Talks on Tolkien II: Kristine Larsen on the Inklings & Science

    In this summer series of Talks on Tolkien I’d like to highlight new/forthcoming books or different disciplinary approaches to the study of Tolkien — Interdisciplinary Tolkien, as I like to think of it. Who better to exemplify the interdisciplinary study of Tolkien than Kristine Larsen, known to many as “The Tolkien Astronomer.”  Dr. Larsen is…

  • Talks on Tolkien II: summer series. Flieger on Kullervo

    In the winter months of 2015, I posted a series, Talks on Tolkien, which consisted of presentations by Tolkien scholars that had been previously recorded and made available on the internet. As I was watching a live stream this morning from the New York Tolkien Conference Facebook page, I was reminded of how much I…

  • Talks on Tolkien: Dawn Walls-Thumma on transformative works

    I had originally announced “Talks on Tolkien” as a winter series, and even though the snow is still slowly melting in my corner of the world, we have passed the spring equinox and the Fall of Sauron, which should be bringing us into a new age. So this post will present the last video in…

  • Talks on Tolkien: John D. Rateliff, the Hobbit manuscripts, and Tolkien archives

    One of the most exciting parts of scholarly research, in my opinion, is having the opportunity to read an original manuscript. This week’s “Talk on Tolkien” features the work of Dr. John D. Rateliff, who is an expert in Tolkien’s Hobbit manuscripts. Dr. Rateliff has studied Tolkien’s drafts and revisions of The Hobbit and these…

  • Talks on Tolkien: Dimitra Fimi on Folklore and “Sellic Spell”

    My weekly “Talks on Tolkien” series continues with a video presentation by Dimitra Fimi. Dr. Fimi was part of the Beowulf Launch Party organized by the Tolkien Society and Middle-earth Network last spring, when Tolkien’s Beowulf and other related texts were first published. Dr. Fimi’s talk is a little different from my previous video selections in that…

  • Talks on Tolkien: John Garth and Tolkien’s Great War

    Talks on Tolkien: John Garth and Tolkien’s Great War

    This week’s “Talk on Tolkien” features the historical, biographical, and literary research of John Garth, who continues to dig into Tolkien’s early years, the beginnings of his mythology, and his experiences in the First World War. Garth’s book, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth, published in 2003, won the Mythopoeic Award for Inklings Scholarship…