Tag Archives: Tolkien at UVM

CFP: Romances in Middle-earth

30 Wednesday Nov 2016

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Tolkien in Vermont conferenceThis call for papers comes from Chris Vaccaro, one of the organizers of the annual Tolkien at UVM Conference in Burlington, Vermont.

14th Annual Tolkien at University of Vermont Conference
Saturday April 8th, 8:30am-5:30 p.m.

Theme: Romances in Middle-earth

Organizers of the Tolkien at UVM Conference are now accepting abstracts for the 2017 conference until the February 1st deadline.

We welcome papers on every topic but will give priority to those addressing the theme. Tolkien wrote that he had the romances of William Morris in mind when writing The Lord of the Rings. We also know he was inspired by the Arthurian romances of England, Wales, and France. Tolkien’s own interlacing narrative style is very much derived from this medieval genre (while also anticipating the Post-modern). Additionally, Tolkien wrote of numerous romances of great intensity and poignancy within his narrative framework. Papers might consider these within the context of miscegenation, gender fluidity, or the homo-erotic, or they might explore other areas of interest.

Please submit abstracts by the February 1st deadline to Christopher Vaccaro at cvaccaro@uvm.edu

Tolkien in Vermont 2016 program

05 Tuesday Apr 2016

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Tolkien in Vermont conferenceThe Tolkien in Vermont conference will take place this coming weekend. This is a small, friendly conference that brings together every year a group of faculty, independent scholars, and students. This year’s theme is Tolkien and Popular Culture.

If you look at the program below, you’ll see a couple of pretty long titles! This is all in the spirit of fun — Kris Larsen has been devising longer and longer titles every year, and when the keynote speaker Robin Reid saw Kristine’s title, she decided to go one better with her own lengthy title. In reaction, I’ve decided to stick to one-word titles!

April 8-9, 2016
University of Vermont
Burlington, Vermont
Lafayette L207

Friday, April 8
7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Tolkien Fireside Reading
Lafayette L207

Saturday, April 9
8:30 – 5:30 p.m.
Lafayette L207

Session 1: 8:30 – 10:00

—Yvette Kisor (Ramapo College) “Queer Tolkien: State of the Field”
—Anna Smol (Mount Saint Vincent University) “Sister-sons” read the abstract here [pdf]
—Chris Vaccaro (University of Vermont) “Saruman’s Sexual Otherness”

Session 2:  10:00 – 11:45. Undergraduate Voices

—Christopher Kelm (U. of Vermont) “Magic and Sorcery: Good and Evil in Tolkien’s Middle-earth”
—Kit Loomis (U. of Vermont) “Not Dead, Legally: Necromancy, the Vyne Ring Curse, and Oath Limitations”
—Liam McAuliffe (U. of Vermont) “Lost in the Lens Flare: Tolkien’s Many Shades of Evil”
—Ryan Quinn (U. of Vermont) “Iarwen Ben-Adar: The Ancient Evil of Arda”

Lunch break  11:45-1:00

Session 3: 1:00-2:30
Keynote:  Robin Reid (Texas A&M University – Commerce)

Tolkien and popular culture: Being the Chronicle of Quests from Fandom to Academia and Back Again as the Island of Anglophone Literary Studies in the United States underwent Transformations During the 1970s to 2000s of the Fourth Age of the World Due to Progressive Movements of the Twentieth Century Challenging Oppressive Hierarchies Relating to Gender, Race, and Sexual Identification (Though not so much Class because “America” and Its Weird Obsession with Bootstraps) as Cultural Studies Swept like a Wave Over the Ivory Towers (Keep in Mind It’s a Simile not an Allegory). Plus Tattoos.

Session 4:  2:30 – 4:00

—Kristine Larsen (University of Connecticut) “Kind People!!!: The Adventures of Svetlana Snape Down the Hobbit Hole; Being a (Semi) Serious and Scholarly Dissertation on The Thread ™  That Ate the Tolkien Society Facebook Page (And Judged it to Strangely Taste Like Bacon); In Which the Author Endeavors to Answer Two Great Primordial Questions, Namely (1) What Do Palindromes, Trebuchets, Quantum Physics and Hello Kitty Have to Do With the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien (Clearly a Rhetorical Question Given That the Obvious Answer is – Very Little), and (2) What Exactly is a Pant of Thong Ale? (The Answer to Which Promises to Shed Great Light on the Gestalt of the Tolkien Fandom)”
—Andrew Peterson (Independent Scholar) “Hobbit Forming: How the Animated Versions of The Hobbit and The Return of the King by Rankin / Bass introduced Middle-earth to a Generation of Wanderers”
—James Williamson (University of Vermont) “Tolkien and Popular Publishing: the Creation of the Fantasy Genre”

Session 5: 4:00 – 5:30

—Gerry Blair (Independent Scholar) “Tolkien Fandom and Pop Culture: The Polite and the Vulgar”
—Leonard Neidorf (Harvard University) “Creation from Literary Criticism in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fall of Arthur”

Tolkien in Vermont 2016 poster

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tolkien conference season 2016

31 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by in Calls for Papers, Conferences, Medieval, Medievalisms, Tolkien

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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!

 

 

CFP: Tolkien in Vermont 2016

19 Monday Oct 2015

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Tolkien in Vermont conference

Conference organizer Chris Vaccaro has sent out the call for papers for the 13th Annual Tolkien in Vermont conference. This is a small, friendly event with a featured speaker and papers by professors, independent scholars, and students. This year’s theme is Tolkien and popular culture, with keynote speaker Dr. Robin Reid.

Tolkien and Popular Culture
University of Vermont
Burlington, Vermont
April 8-9, 2016

Abstracts should be sent by January 15th to Chris Vaccaro at  cvaccaro@uvm.edu.

To look at previous years’ programs, you can go to the conference website.

Tolkien at UVM conference April 10-12

07 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by in Conferences, Medieval, Medievalisms, Old English, Tolkien

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The 12th Annual Tolkien at University of Vermont conference is just days away.  The conference is free and open to the public. It starts with a Friday night Fireside reading at which participants can get up and read their favorite passages, and continues on Saturday with a day of conference presentations. On Sunday afternoon, the University Tolkien Club organizes a “Springle-Ring Shire Festival” with all kinds of fun activities.

This year’s conference theme is Medieval Verse Narratives, and the keynote speaker is Dr. Michael D.C. Drout, who will be speaking about “Scholarship as Art, Art as Scholarship: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Beowulf.”

The other presentations are:

Gerry Blair (Independent Scholar). “J.R.R. Tolkien, Performance Artist and Modern Medievalist.”

Jamie Williamson (University of Vermont). “Verses and Prose: Medieval Narrative, Nineteenth Century Medievalism, and Tolkien.”

Andrew Liptak (Independent Scholar/Norwich University). “Modern Fantasy’s Roots in Medieval Verse.”

Kristine Larsen (Central Connecticut State University). “Guinevere, Grimhild, and the Corrigan: Witches and Bitches in Tolkien’s Medieval Narrative Verse, or, Good Girls Don’t Use Magic (Except if You’re Galadriel, but Elf Magic is Diff erent, and Who Ever Said Galadriel was a Good Girl?)”

Andrew C. Peterson (Harvard). “A Brief Exploration of Tolkien’s Alliterative Verse and Echoes of The Fall of Arthur Heard in Middle-earth”

Christopher Vaccaro (University of Vermont). “’Dyrne langað’: Secret Longing in Beowulf and The Lord of the Rings.”

Anna Smol (Mount Saint Vincent University). “Poetic Time-Travel in The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son”

Cheryl Hunter (Independent Scholar). “Beowulf and Thorin as Ancestral Heroes: Their Choices, and the Dragons They Face.”

and Undergraduate Voices

For more information and to view past programs, you can go to the conference website.

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

Tolkien Conference Season in the US: Spring & Summer 2014

10 Sunday Nov 2013

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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 conference sessions outside of the United States.

In April, two conferences will occur almost back-to-back. If I can scrounge up enough time and money, I would love to be able to go from one directly to the other.

Tolkien in Vermont: April 11-13, 2014

Tolkien in Vermont conferenceFirst is the 11th annual Tolkien in Vermont conference to be held April 11 – 13 at the University of Vermont. The theme of the 2014 conference is “Bombadil and other Middle-earth Mysteries” though papers on any topic will be considered. Keynote speaker Kristine Larsen is well known for her research on science in Tolkien’s works, and she has been a frequent contributor to this conference. The Vermont conference has always been an intimate gathering with a lot of student participation. It provides a great opportunity to get to know people and, besides enjoying a full day of presentations, to have some fun in the Friday night readings or the Sunday morning Springle-ring that the university Tolkien Club typically organizes. The call for papers can be found on the conference website, which is in the process of adding the list of papers given in past years: http://tolkienvt.org/.  Deadline for proposals: January 18, 2014.

Tolkien sessions at PCA/ACA: April 16-19, 2014

Popular Culture Association logoFrom the Vermont conference, you can head down the road to Chicago for the annual Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association conference, to be held April 16-19. This year, Tolkien Studies has been added as a new area on a trial basis. If sufficient interest is shown, Tolkien Studies will become a permanent field in the conference program.

The deadline for submissions has passed, and the conference program has not been posted yet, but several roundtable discussions and Tolkien sessions have been proposed.  Look for conference details on the PCA/ACA website: http://pcaaca.org/

Tolkien at Kalamazoo: May 8-11, 2014

Kalamazoo campus swan pond“Tolkien at Kalamazoo” is an informal group that has sponsored up to eight sessions annually at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. For 2014, Congress organizers decided to cut back every sponsoring group to a maximum of four sessions, much to the dismay of many participants including the Tolkien group, which has organized very well attended sessions every year. Nonetheless, there will be Tolkien sessions in 2014 on The Fall of Arthur, on Tolkien’s medieval sources, on Tolkien and science, and a “Tolkien Unbound” evening of entertainment. The conference program will be announced in February on the Congress website: http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/

Mythcon 45: August 8-11, 2014

Mythcon 45 logoThe call for papers has just been posted on the Mythopoeic Society website: http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-45/papers/.  Deadline for submissions is April 15, 2014. The theme of Mythcon 45 is “Where Fantasy Fits,” and proposals can address the work of the Inklings (Tolkien, Lewis, Williams) or any other aspects of the conference theme.  Richard C. West will be the scholar guest of honour and Ursula Vernon, the author guest of honour. The conference will take place at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts.

Upcoming Tolkien conferences 2012-13

13 Monday Aug 2012

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Having missed the Mythopoeic Society’s conference that just wrapped up in California last week – one of these days I’ll get there! – and thinking about the Return of the Ring conference that will begin in Loughborough UK in a few days – where  I had been hoping to go but had to cancel in the end – I started thinking about other Tolkien-related conferences that I can and cannot attend in the coming year. Here is a list of upcoming Tolkien conferences – the ones I know of, at least.  This year marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of The Hobbit, and with Peter Jackson’s first installment of The Hobbit films coming out in December, there is particular interest in that text this year.

Do you know of any other conferences relating to Tolkien studies that I’ve missed? Please let me know!

Return of the Ring: Celebrating Tolkien in 2012
University of Loughborough, UK
August 16-20, 2012
http://www.returnofthering.org/

Tolkien: The Forest and the City
The School of English, Trinity College, Dublin
September 21-22, 2012
http://www.tcd.ie/English/news-events/Tolkien Conference.php
Keynote address by Tom Shippey. Invited lecturers: Michael D.C. Drout; Verlyn Flieger; Thomas Honegger; Alison Milbank. Roundtable: Henry Gee. Papers by Dimitra Fimi and others.

Oxonmoot
Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford
September 21-23, 2012
http://www.oxonmoot.org/

Hobbit Symposium
The Woode-walkers Medieval Studies Group, the English Dept., and Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, St. Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri, US
December 1, 2012
Call for papers: September 22, 2012
Plenary address: Douglas A. Anderson
http://woodewalkers.wordpress.com/hobbit-symposium/

Celebrating The Hobbit: A Conference on the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien
Valparaiso University
Valparaiso, Indiana, US
March 1-3, 2013
Call for papers: September 1, 2012
Plenary speakers: Verlyn Flieger, Douglas A. Anderson, John D. Rateliff. Featuring a 25th anniversary performance of Symphony #1: The Lord of the Rings, composed and conducted by Johan de Meij.
http://conference.valpo.edu/tolkien/

10th Annual Tolkien at UVM Conference
University of Vermont
Burlington, Vermont, US
Keynote speaker: John D. Rateliff
The conference usually takes place in early April (2013).
The call for papers usually has a January deadline.
Contact: Chris Vacarro : cvaccaro [at] uvm [dot] edu

Leo Con 2013
Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Anime/Manga, Gaming Convention
Texas A&M Commerce
April 13, 2013
Planned events include Hobbit discussion panels.
http://leoconn.wordpress.com/sigil/books/

10th DTG Tolkien Seminar 2013
Adaptations of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings
10th DTG Tolkien Seminar
RWTH Aachen
April, 26-28, 2013
Call for papers: November 30, 2012
http://www.tolkiengesellschaft.de/8051/call-for-papers-tolkien-seminar-2013/

Tolkien at Kalamazoo
International Congress on Medieval Studies
University of Western Michigan
Kalamazoo, Michigan, US
May 9-12, 2013
Call for papers: September 15, 2012
http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/

Follow the Congress links for contact information and instructions on how to submit proposals. Sessions that specifically mention Tolkien are the following:
Tolkien at Kalamazoo:I.In Honor of Verlyn Flieger: The State of Tolkien Scholarship (ARoundtable Discussion); II. Art and Music of TheHobbit; III. Tolkien as Medieval Scholar; IV. Women in Tolkien’s Professional Life; V. In Honor of Jane Chance: Tolkien and Alterity; VI. Tolkien Unbound (A Performance)

Society for the Study of Homosexuality in the Middle Ages (SSHMA)Queer Tolkien [cosponsored with Tolkien at Kalamazoo]

Tales after Tolkien: Medievalism and Twenty-First-Century Fantasy Literature

Mythcon 44
Green and Growing: The Land and Its Inhabitants in Fantasy
The Mythopoeic Society
Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan, US
July 12-15, 2013
http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/44/

Omentielva Lempea: The Fifth International Conference on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Invented Languages
August 8-11, 2013
Helsinki, Finland
http://www.omentielva.com/next.htm

And looking even further ahead:

3rd Conference on Middle-earth, Part 2
March 28-30, 2014
Westford, MA, US
Call for papers:  March 25, 2013 – December 31, 2013
http://www.3rdcome.org/index.html

I’m wondering if there will be any Tolkien sessions at the MLA 2013 convention or at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in 2013?  If you know of any Tolkien studies panels there or elsewhere, let us know!