Anna Smol: A Single Leaf

Category: Tolkien

  • Tolkien and medievalism sessions, K’zoo 2015

    The International Congress on Medieval Studies has released a preview of the sessions that have been approved for the 2015 conference in Kalamazoo, Michigan. You can find the full information for each call for papers on the Congress sessions page. While there are hundreds of sessions on medieval topics, I have listed the ones that…

  • Kalamazoo blogs and videos

    If you regret not being able to go to the 49th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan (or you just didn’t get to all the sessions you wanted, or you want to review the ones that you did attend), I’ve collected some blog posts and videos that might give you a taste of…

  • Tolkien Studies at PCA 2014, part two

    In my previous post, I wrote about one of the roundtable discussions in the Tolkien Studies special area introduced this year at the national Popular Culture / American Culture Association conference, which was held in Chicago in April. Today I have a summary of another roundtable discussion, this one on doing research in the Tolkien…

  • Tolkien Studies at PCA 2014, part one

    A couple of weeks ago, I attended my first Popular Culture / American Culture Association national conference, held in Chicago April 16-19. It was also the first year in which the PCA was undertaking a trial run of Tolkien Studies as a special topic. After next year, the organization will decide whether Tolkien Studies should…

  • Dictionnaire Tolkien review in Medievally Speaking

    A little over a month ago, I published a review of Dictionnaire Tolkien in Medievally Speaking, an open access review publication associated with the International Society for the Study of Medievalism. This book challenged me to think about the reception of Tolkien in languages other than English; specifically in this case, in French. It hadn’t…

  • What a day for Tolkien news!

    This morning, in the midst of grading and preparing class notes and answering student emails, I happened to glance at my twitter feed to find that the long-awaited Beowulf translation by Tolkien is about to be published on May 22! Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary is another in a series of publications by the author’s…

  • The Tolkien Encyclopedia & Reader’s Diary: A Look Back

    The J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment is now available in paperback and Kindle version, making this reference work much more affordable than the $100-plus Canadian and US hardback edition (with similar pricing in the UK). The Encyclopedia, edited by Michael D.C. Drout, includes entries by well-known critics such as Tom Shippey, Verlyn Flieger,…

  • Tracking Tolkien conference listings

    In the past I’ve tried to list all of the Tolkien-related conferences that I knew of in the coming year, but now I’ve discovered that I don’t have to. Marcel Aubron-Bülles at The Tolkienist has compiled a wonderful list of Tolkien-related meetings throughout Europe and North America, more extensive than anything I would do! So…

  • CFP: Humour in and around Tolkien’s work

    This call for papers just came in. The original deadlines have been extended. Proposals are now due on March 3 and, if accepted, final papers by June 30. Call for Papers: Humour in and around the works of Tolkien Tolkien has until recently been seen primarily as a writer of epic fantasy, a genre usually…

  • Tolkien Studies at PCA: sessions announced

    Here is the list of Tolkien Studies sessions that have been approved for the 2014 Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association conference in Chicago in April. The dates and times of the sessions will be posted on the PCA/ACA website in February. As you can see, there was an excellent response to this year’s…