Tag Archives: International Medieval Congress

Talks on Tolkien this summer

30 Sunday Jun 2019

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I was planning to be in Leeds today at the International Medieval Congress in order to attend the first sessions on Tolkien tomorrow, but bad weather diverted my flight, making me miss my UK connection, and landing me even farther away than where I started. So what do you do for an extra day stranded in a hotel room waiting for a rebooked flight? How about looking at Tolkien conference sessions coming up this summer in case you’re lucky enough to attend one of these events. Or if you’re not attending, you can see what people are working on and hopefully wait for the articles and books to come later.

The Leeds conference features 5 sessions on Tolkien. You can search through the huge online program, but it’s far easier to look at Dr. Dimitra Fimi’s blog, where she lists the speakers and papers in the sessions that she’s organized.

Another conference of note is Mythcon, taking place this year in San Diego from August 2 – 5. The scholar guest of honour is Verlyn Flieger. Keep an eye out for the program, as there are always sessions on Tolkien (and the Inklings).

The Tolkien 2019 conference promises to be a big event, with major speakers, artwork, music, and other evening activities. This event commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Tolkien Society will take place in Birmingham, UK from August 7 to 11. You can find the featured speakers and the list of other speakers and their presentation titles here. I’ll have more to say about my own paper in a few weeks!

July Tolkien conferences – Leeds & Mythcon

16 Monday Jul 2018

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The summer conference season is in full swing. A couple of weeks ago, Leeds was the site of the Tolkien Society’s one-day seminar, hosted by Anna Milon, followed by the International Medieval Congress sessions on Tolkien, organized by Dr. Dimitra Fimi.  Dr. Fimi did an amazing job keeping up with each presentation, posting notes on what was being said. You can catch a glimpse of each presenter’s main points by looking at Dr. Fimi’s Facebook post: Tolkien at IMC Leeds 2018 round-up.  If you scroll down on her Twitter feed, @Dr_Dimitra_Fimi, you’ll also find notes from the Tolkien Society Seminar talks as well.

Tolkien at Leeds 2018 closing dinner

Tolkien at Leeds 2018 closing dinner

All of the presentations in Leeds were given to packed audiences, to the point that people had to sit on the floor in some sessions, and a few of the later panels had to be moved to larger rooms. Lots of interest in Tolkien! We’re hoping that the same number of sessions will be approved for next year’s IMC conference. (The Tolkien Society Seminar, on the other hand, will be suspended for next year, as attention will be focused on the big Tolkien 2019 conference in Birmingham later in the summer.)

From Leeds in the UK, Tolkien conference activity now moves to Mythcon 49 in Atlanta in the US, from July 20 to 23, with the theme “On the Shoulders of Giants.”  The keynote speakers are Dr. Robin Anne Reid, the scholar guest of honour, and Donato Giancolo as the artist guest of honour.  The Mythcon 49 Schedule page includes a list of speakers and topics.  “What do you do with a drunken hobbit?”  — you have to be there to find out!

 

2018 Tolkien sessions in Leeds

06 Wednesday Dec 2017

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This week, I received word from the International Medieval Congress in Leeds that my proposal has been accepted for one of the Tolkien sessions organized by Dr. Dimitra Fimi. My paper, “Tolkien’s Typological Imagination,” will be part of the first session on Memory in Tolkien’s Medievalism on July 2nd.  We were only allowed a 100-word proposal, a difficult exercise in condensing ideas, and this is the best I could do:

In The Lord of the Rings, Sam suddenly recognizes that Frodo’s possession of Galadriel’s star-glass connects them to Eärendil’s history: “Why, to think of it, we’re in the same tale still!”  Here, Tolkien dramatizes the link between “the memory of the past and the foreshadowing of the future that resides in all things” (Notion Club 178). Eärendil is the type of a sacrificing hero, reenacted by Frodo later in the course of linear time. I propose to discuss such examples of Tolkien’s typological imagination and how it shapes concepts of memory and history in his work.

Below are the titles and times of all the Tolkien panels. For full details listing all the speakers, see Dimitra Fimi’s blog.

  • Memory in Tolkien’s Medievalism I. July 2, 11:15 – 12:45
  • Memory in Tolkien’s Medievalism II. July 2, 14:15-15:45
  • “New” Tolkien: Expanding the Canon. July 2, 16:30 – 18:00
  • Tolkien: Medieval Roots and Modern Branches, I. July 3, 14:15-15:45
  • Tolkien: Medieval Roots and Modern Branches, II. July 3, 16:30 – 18:00
  • Tolkien in Context(s): a Round Table Discussion. July 3, 19:00 – 20:00

With the one-day Tolkien Society Seminar that usually precedes this conference, there should be plenty of talks on Tolkien to enjoy at the beginning of July in Leeds. I’ll post full details after the official IMC program comes out in a few months.

 

 

CFP: Tolkien in Leeds 2018

19 Saturday Aug 2017

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This call for papers comes from Dr. Dimitra Fimi, the organizer of the Tolkien sessions at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds, which will be held July 2-5, 2018.

IMC Leeds 2018 – Call for Papers on J.R.R. Tolkien

I am seeking abstracts for sessions on J.R.R. Tolkien for the International Medieval Congress, Leeds, 2-5 July 2018, under the following themes:

‘New’ Tolkien: Expanding the Canon – paper session
This session will focus on recent works by J.R.R. Tolkien, posthumously published and authorized by the Tolkien Estate. Many of these volumes include Tolkien’s translations or creative retellings of medieval material. Papers can focus on (but are not restricted to) The Fall of Arthur (ed. Christopher Tolkien, 2013), Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary (ed. Christopher Tolkien, 2014), The Story of Kullervo (ed. Verlyn Flieger, 2015), A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages (ed. Dimitra Fimi and Andrew Higgins, 2016), The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun (ed. Verlyn Flieger, forthcoming, 2017) and The Tale of Beren and Lúthien (ed. Christopher Tolkien, 2017).

Memory in Tolkien’s Medievalism – paper session
J.R.R. Tolkien’s “secondary world” unfolds in an immense depth of time. This sense of depth is inherent in The Lord of the Rings and is apparent in scenes such as the Council of Elrond, during which Elrond himself reminisces about events that took place thousands of years previously. What is more, it is not a literary device: Tolkien spent most of his lifetime inventing an extended mythology that detailed the history of his imaginary world over millennia, including a cosmogonic myth and a great number of interrelated legends and tales. This session will explore time in Tolkien’s legendarium with an emphasis on memory. Papers can focus on topics such as the value, nature, means, or trauma of remembering and/or forgetting the past in Middle-earth, the role of memory in shaping the future, memorials and monuments, the fictitious transmission of the legendarium (via texts or orally), and remembering and forgetting as part of Tolkien’s “secondary world infrastructures” (Wolf, 2012) such as timelines, genealogies, languages, cultures, etc. (This is not an exclusive list.)

Tolkien: Medieval Roots and Modern Branches – paper session
This session will accommodate wider topics and new approaches to Tolkien’s medievalism, ranging from source studies and theoretical readings, to comparative studies (including Tolkien’s legacy).

Tolkien in Context(s) – round table discussion
This round table discussion provides a forum to explore different approaches to Tolkien’s work via various frameworks and contexts, from Tolkien’s medieval scholarship and his social/historical/intellectual milieu, to worldbuilding, the wider history of fantasy literature, and including Tolkien in an academic curriculum (the list is not exclusive).

If you are interested, please submit a paper/round table contribution title and abstract to Dr Dimitra Fimi (dfimi@cardiffmet.ac.uk) by 31st August 2017.

  • Length of abstracts: 100 words
  • (Papers will be 15-20 minutes long while round table contributions will be 10-12 minutes long)
  • With your abstract, please include name and details of contributor (affiliation, address, and preferred e-mail address).

Dr Dimitra Fimi
Cardiff Metropolitan University

Tolkien sessions in Leeds, 2017

19 Friday May 2017

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The Tolkien meetings in Vermont, San Diego (the PCA/ACA), and Kalamazoo are now over and conference season is in full swing. Next stop, Leeds!

The Tolkien Society Seminar is held one day before the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds, which also sponsors some Tolkien sessions. So, details about the Seminar first. I’m pleased to say that I’ll be attending for the first time and giving a paper.

Tolkien Society Seminar

July 2nd, The Hilton Leeds City. Read more about booking here.

The program is now on the Tolkien Society website. Registration starts at 9:00, with papers running from around 9:30 to 5:00, with the opportunity for a convivial gathering at a nearby pub afterwards.

The special theme of this year’s Seminar is “poetry and song.”

  • Brad Eden, The scholar as minstrel: Music as a conscious/subconscious theme in Tolkien’s poetry
  • Michaela Hausmann, Lyrics on Lost Lands – Constructing Lost Places through Poetry in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings
  • Andrew Higgins, Poetry and Language Invention: The Interconnected Nature of Tolkien’s The Qenya Lexicon and His Early Poetry
  • Penelope Holdaway, Fair and Perilous: The Women of Tolkien’s non-Middle-earth Lays and Legends
  • Bertrand Bellet, Aurelie Bremont, Dimitra Fimi, Tolkien and Breton poetry:  What layers lie behind Tolkien’s lays?
  • Stuart Lee, Tolkien and The Battle of Maldon
  • Kristine Larsen, “Diadem the Fallen Day”: Astronomical and Arboreal Motifs in the Poem “Kortirion Among the Trees”
  • Szymon Pindur,  The magical and reality-transforming function of Tolkien’s songs and verse creations
  • Irina Metzler, Singing the World into Being: The Creative Power of Song in Tolkien’s Legendarium and Real-World Mythology
  • Massimiliano Izzo, In search of the Wandering Fire: otherworldly imagery in The Song of Ælfwine
  • Anna Smol, Seers and Singers: Sub-creative Collaborators in Tolkien’s Fiction.

International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds

The IMC is a huge conference that begins the day after the Tolkien Seminar. I won’t be able to attend this year, though for a happy reason: my family will be in the middle of a European vacation, and Leeds can only be a one-day stop for us. However, if you’re looking for presentations on Tolkien, there are four sessions this year organized by Dr. Dimitra Fimi. The following is an abridged version of the conference program; follow the links for more information on the speakers and for abstracts of the papers.

Session 242: J.R.R. Tolkien: Medieval Roots and Modern Branches.
Monday 3 July 14:15-15:45
Organiser: Dimitra Fimi
Moderator: Andrew Higgins

  • Yvette Kisor, Tolkien’s Beowulf: Translating Knights
  • Anahit Behrooz, Mappa Mundi to Mappa Middle-Earth: Positioning J.R.R. Tolkien’s Cartography between Medieval and Modern Practices
  • Aurélie Brémont, Tales of the Corrigan: From Folklore to Nationalist Reinvention
  • Victoria Holtz-Wodzak, Treebeard’s Priesthood and the Franciscan Sanctity of Tolkien’s Natural World

Read more information about the speakers in this session and their abstracts here.

Session 342: “New” Tolkien: Expanding the Canon
Monday 3 July 16:30-18:00
Organiser and Moderator: Dimitra Fimi

  • Brad Eden, Mirkwood as Otherness: ‘New’ Tolkien and the Liminal Forest
  • Kristine Larsen, Magic, Matrimony, and the Moon: Medieval Lunar Symbolism in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun and The Fall of Arthur
  • Andrew Higgins, A Secret Vice, the 1930s, and the Growth of Tolkien’s ‘Tree of Tongues’

Read more information about the speakers in this session and their abstracts here.

Session 442: The Road Goes Ever On: The Future of Tolkien Scholarship – A Round Table Discussion
Monday 3 July 19:00-20:00
Organiser: Dimitra Fimi
Moderator: Carl L. Phelpstead

Read the abstract here.

Session 1019: Otherness in Tolkien’s Medievalism
Wednesday 5 July 9:00-10:30
Organiser: Dimitra Fimi
Moderator: Kristine Larsen

  • Irina Metzler, Disability in Tolkien’s Texts: Medieval ‘Otherness’?
  • Thomas Honegger, Tolkien’s Other Middle Ages
  • Sara Brown, The Invisible Other: Tolkien’s Dwarf-Women and the ‘Feminine Lack’
  • Gaëlle Abaléa, Our World, the Other World, and Those In-Between: Community with and Separation from the Dead in Tolkien’s Work

Read more about the speakers in this session and their abstracts here.

Tolkien events in Leeds

02 Saturday Jul 2016

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If you’re in the vicinity of Leeds, you can attend a number of Tolkien papers over the next few days.  On Sunday July 3, the Tolkien Society Seminar will take place in the Hilton Leeds City.  This one-day series of presentations focuses on the theme of Life, Death, and Immortality.  You can read the full program here.

The Tolkien Society has cleverly scheduled the seminar a day before the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds, which runs from July 4 to 7, so anyone who is around can attend the IMC sessions on Tolkien.  You can explore the full IMC program here.  I’ve copied below the information on the sessions on Tolkien, organized by Dimitra Fimi.  Let me know if I’ve missed any others!

Session 331 J.R.R.Tolkien: Medieval Roots and Modern Branches

Oganiser: Dimitra Fimi;  Chair:  Chris Vaccaro
Monday 4 July 2016: 16.30-18.00

Abstract: This session will address the complexities of Tolkien’s modern Middle Ages. Andrew Higgins will explore Tolkien’s appropriation of Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon perceptions of the Finns in his legendarium. Aurélie Brémont will examine parallels between Tolkien’s and T.H. White’s medievalisms. Sara Brown will revisit Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings via the practice, philosophy, and symbolism of alchemy.

‘Those who cling in queer corners to the forgotten tongues and manners of an elder day’: J. R. R. Tolkien, Finns, and Elves
Andrew Higgins, Independent Scholar, London

J. R. R. Tolkien and T. H. White: Modern Brits and Old Wizards
Aurélie Brémont, Centre d’Études Médiévales Anglaises (CEMA), Université Paris IV – Sorbonne

Stirring the Alembic: Alchemical Resonances in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth
Sara Brown, Department of English, Rydal Penrhos School, Conwy

and one more session (updated on July 2, thanks to Kris Swank):

session 431
 ‘New’ Tolkien: The Story of Kullervo and A Secret Vice – A Round Table Discussion

Monday 4 July 2016: 19.00-20.00
Organiser and Chair Dimitra Fimi

Abstract This round table discussion will focus on works by J. R. R. Tolkien published during the last 12 months. Participants will comment on The Story of Kullervo, edited by Verlyn Flieger, a creative retelling of a tragic episode from the Finnish Kalevala; and A Secret Vice, edited by Dimitra Fimi and Andrew Higgins, an extended edition of Tolkien’s essay on invented languages together with new material on philology, contemporary language theories, and language as art.

Participants include Brad Eden (Valparaiso University), Kristine Larsen (Central Connecticut State University), and Goering Nelson (University of Oxford

 

I wish I could be there, but at least I’m hoping that we’ll see some blog posts and tweets to give us an idea of what was discussed (I’m looking at you, Dimitra, Andrew, Sara, and Aurelie!).

Tolkien conference season 2016

31 Sunday Jan 2016

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Here are some Tolkien conferences coming up in the spring and summer — prime conference season! I can’t claim to list every event that’s going on, so if you’d like to add something to the list, please let me know in the comments section. If you want to know about Tolkien-related events around the world, not necessarily just conferences, I’d suggest the public Facebook group International Tolkien Fellowship List of Events. Also, Troels Forchammer’s monthly Tolkien Transactions usually catches more items than I’m aware of. But here are the conferences that I do know about:

Popular Culture Association (PCA)

Popular Culture Association logo

Seattle, Washington
March 22 -25, 2016

The preliminary program, organized by Robin Reid, can be viewed here. The speakers include Martin Barker presenting on the World Hobbit Project; an academic editors’ roundtable discussion with Leslie Donovan, Janet Croft, Brad Eden, Janice Bogstad, and Martin Barker; and numerous other papers on adaptation, translation, reception, and more. The nice thing about the online PCA program is that you can dig down into each session and read the abstracts of all the papers. There are eight sessions in the Tolkien Studies area, another successful year for this new subject area at the PCA national conference.

 

13th Annual Tolkien in Vermont conference

Tolkien in Vermont conference

Burlington, Vermont
April 8 – 9, 2016

This year’s theme is “Tolkien and Popular Culture,” with keynote speaker Robin Reid. A program will be available on the Tolkien in Vermont website. This small conference, organized by Chris Vaccaro, is always a friendly mix of faculty, students, and independent scholars.

 

Tolkien’s Philosophy of Language

13th Seminar of the Deutsche Tolkien Gesellschaft (DTF)
The Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Walking Tree Publishers
May 6 – 8, 2016

A link to more conference information can be found here.

 

Tolkien at Kalamazoo

Kalamazoo campus swan pond

International Congress on Medieval Studies
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo Michigan
May 12 – 15, 2016

I’ve already posted a schedule of sessions on Tolkien and medievalism as they appeared in the preliminary program. There are seven sessions dealing with Tolkien, mostly organized by Brad Eden and a few others. This year, one of the plenary speakers will be Jane Chance talking about “How we read J.R.R. Tolkien reading Grendel’s mother.” The ICMS is a huge conference, usually drawing around 3,000 participants in sessions on all aspects of the Middle Ages and medievalism.

 

Tolkien Among Scholars: 7th Unquendor Lustrum Conference 2016

Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society and the Dutch Tolkien Society Unquendor.
June 18, 2016

The keynote speakers for this international conference will be Thomas M. Honegger and Paul Smith. The program will be posted on the conference website.

 

Tolkien Society Seminar 2016

Tolkien Society

Leeds, UK
July 3, 2016

The theme of this year’s seminar is “Life, Death, and Immortality,” and if you’re interested in giving a paper, there’s still time: March 25 is the deadline for submissions. You can find the Call for Papers and more information here. The Seminar takes place the day before the International Medieval Congress begins at Leeds University, where you’ll find more Tolkien sessions (see below).

 

International Medieval Congress

medieval

Leeds University
July 4 – 7, 2016

Dimitra Fimi has organized two sessions on Tolkien for this conference. Like Kalamazoo, the Leeds conference draws thousands of medievalists every year. The program will be posted on the conference website.

 

New York Tolkien Conference

cropped-logo-art.jpg

Baruch College, New York City
July 16, 2016

This conference, organized by Jessica Burke and Anthony Burdge, is back again after last year’s successful inaugural event. The special theme for this year’s conference is “The Inklings and Science,” with guests of honour Kristine Larsen and Jared Lobdell. The call for papers has not yet been posted, but keep checking the conference site for information as it becomes available.

 

Mythcon 47

Mythopoeic Society

Mythopoeic Society
San Antonio, Texas
August 5 – 8, 2016

The special theme for this year’s conference is “Faces of Mythology: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern.” The Scholar Guest of Honour is Andrew Lazo and the Author Guest of Honour, Midori Snyder. You can find a call for papers here; the deadline is May 1st to send proposals to Jason Fisher, the papers co-ordinator for this conference.

 

That’s my list for now. Clearly, the field of Tolkien Studies is thriving. I wish I had unlimited funds to travel to every one of these meetings!

 

 

Tolkien conference season 2015

04 Wednesday Feb 2015

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It’s time to start organizing my travel to various conferences this spring and summer. I wish I could attend all of these meetings, but I’ll be fortunate enough to go to a couple of them at least. My list focuses on North American conferences because I know those best, but please let me know in the comments if there are others. I hope my list will demonstrate the healthy state of academic Tolkien Studies and maybe entice you to go to one of these events — if you’re not already booking your tickets. And while there will be plenty of professional scholars at these conferences,  most of these events draw a lively mix of academics, independent scholars, writers, artists, fans of all kinds.

The first meeting will be held in a few weeks – not exactly springtime where I live, but still it does kick off the conference season:

There and Back Again: Tolkien in 2015 OSU Tolkien 2015: There and Back Again Conference, Feb 20-21, 2015
The Ohio State University.
February 20-21, 2015

This is the second annual Popular Culture and the Deep Past event sponsored by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Ohio State U.  According to the event website: “this will be a full-fledged conference, itself nested in a broader ‘carnival’ of popular and traditional cultural events and activities.”  Sounds like there will be something for everyone.

Popular Culture/American Culture Association National Conference
Popular Culture Association logo
New Orleans Marriott
April 1-4, 2015

This is a massive conference that draws scholars from a huge variety of fields. The newly established Tolkien Studies area, organized by Robin Reid, is sponsoring eight sessions plus a business meeting for a second year in a row.  The final program should be posted soon on the website.

12th annual Tolkien in Vermont conference
Tolkien in Vermont conference
University of Vermont
Burlington, VT
April 10-11, 2015

This year’s theme is medieval narrative verse, with Michael Drout as the keynote speaker. According to the conference organizer, Chris Vaccaro, a program will be posted soon on the website. This is usually a small and friendly conference attended by faculty, students, and the general public, with an open mic night on Friday followed by a day of presentations on Saturday.

International Congress on Medieval Studies 
Kalamazoo campus swan pond
University of Western Michigan
Kalamazoo, MI
May  14-17, 2015

This annual conference draws thousands of medievalists every year, but it also includes anyone interested in the scholarly study of Tolkien (not always the same as a medievalist).  The Tolkien at Kalamazoo group sponsors as many sessions as are allowed by the Congress organizers, and other sponsoring groups have sessions on Tolkien or on medievalisms as well.  You can search through the conference program  for what interests you.

New York City Tolkien Conference
New York City Tolkien ConferenceBaruch College
New York
June 13, 2015

The call for papers is on the site, with a deadline for proposals of April 7, 2015.  The keynote speaker will be Janet Brennan Croft and musical guest of honour, John DiBartolo.

Mythopoeic Society Conference / Mythcon 46
Mythopoeic Society
Hotel Elegante
Colorado Springs, Colorado
July 31-August 3, 2015

The special theme is the Arthurian Mythos.  I expect that more details about the program will appear on the website soon. This conference is usually a nice combination of serious academic papers and fun social events, readings, and more.

International Medieval Congress 
IMC 2015 poster
University of Leeds
July 6-9, 2015

This is the largest conference on medieval studies in Europe. A search through the program found three sessions on Tolkien.

Update February 12: Dr. Dimitra Fimi, who has organized some of these sessions, has more details about sessions on Tolkien, medievalism, fantasy, Arthurian tradition and more on her blog.

And looking ahead towards the end of the summer,  there is always
The Tolkien Society’s Oxonmoot
Tolkien Society
September 10-13, 2015.
St. Anthony’s  College, Oxford

And here are a couple of other conferences that focus on medievalism and that could very well end up sponsoring sessions on Tolkien:

The Middle Ages in the Modern World (MAMO)
June 29 – July 2, 2015
University of Lincoln, Lincoln UK

Update Feb. 12:  The provisional programme is now available. One session on Tolkien and lots of other good panels on various medievalism topics.

International Conference on Medievalism
This conference usually takes place in the fall.  I don’t see any information on the website yet about the next meeting.

I realize on looking over this list that it is heavily skewed towards Tolkien as a medievalist. If there are any other conferences you feel people should know about, please feel free to add them in the comments. It would also be interesting to know about other Tolkien conferences beyond North America and the UK.

Update Feb. 12:  Thanks to Marcel Aubron Bülles  here is another conference program:

German Tolkien Society
University of Aachen
May 1-3, 2015