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AAU Teaching Showcase: Voicing Interpretations
Each year, the Association of Atlantic Universities sponsors a Teaching Showcase, a conference on a specific theme dealing with teaching and learning. This year’s conference theme at Mount Allison University in Sackville New Brunswick was “Assessment: Teaching, Learning, Quality.” As always, the conference provided plenty of opportunities to reflect on what I do in the…
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Tolkien Conference Season in the US: Spring & Summer 2014
This coming spring and summer will see a number of Tolkien conference sessions in the US: you might have to pace yourself carefully! I’m focusing on American conferences, since those are the ones I know best — let me know if there are others I’ve missed. I would also love to hear about upcoming Tolkien…
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Popular Culture Association: Tolkien Studies — deadline Nov. 1st
The Popular Culture Association has designated a new special topic of Tolkien Studies, which may become a permanent area in the conference if enough interest is shown. Currently, I know of roundtables being proposed on the state of Tolkien Studies and on the Marquette Tolkien Archive, and I’ve also heard of individual papers likely to…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.”…
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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…
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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…
A Single Leaf
“He used to spend a long time on a single leaf, trying to catch its shape, and its sheen, and the glistening of dewdrops on its edges.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, “Leaf by Niggle”
Anna Smol: A Single Leaf 