September 2024 Call for Papers and Proposals

Tolkien Society Hybrid Seminar 2024: Tolkien as Heritage

The Tolkien Society Seminar is a short conference of both researcher-led and non-academic presentations on a specific theme pertaining to Tolkien scholarship.The Society held three seminars in 2021 (Twenty-first Century Receptions of Tolkien, Tolkien and Diversity, and Translating and Illustrating Tolkien) and their online setting has seen increased interest with over 700 attendees from 52 countries at ‘Tolkien and Diversity’. After the seminar, all paper recordings from the seminars are uploaded onto the Tolkien Society’s YouTube channel. We are delighted to run hybrid seminars where delegates can enjoy discussions on Tolkien in person and online.

The Tolkien Society is excited to partner with Tolkinovo društvo Srbije (the Tolkien Society of Serbia) and Centar za Muzeologiju I Heritologiju (the Centre for Museology and Heritology, the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade). Saturday 7th December will be held in person at the University of Belgrade, with papers delivered in Serbian – you can submit paper and panel proposals in Serbian for the 7th here. Sunday 8th December will be online and hosted by The Tolkien Society on Zoom – you can submit paper and panel proposals for the 8th below. The seminar will be co-run by Mina Lukić Gunner (Tolkinovo društvo Srbije) and Will Sherwood (The Tolkien Society’s Education Secretary).

We invite paper (20 minutes) and panel (60 minute) proposals on Tolkien’s work as heritage, asking how the phenomena analysed contribute to the affirmation, preservation, popularisation, and transmission of his legacy, securing its presence in global or local cultural memory.

Paper and panel proposals may address but are in no way limited to:

  • Institutions and organizations that take care of Tolkien’s works and promote their research and presentation (e.g., Tolkien Estate, libraries, universities, fan associations)
  • Memorials and monuments, sites of memory, commemorations
  • Conventions and fan gatherings
  • Collecting
  • Internet activities (e.g. social networks, forums, blogs, websites, podcasts)
  • Multimedia interpretations and re-imaginings (e.g. adaptations, dramatisations, artworks, fan fiction, games)
  • Translations
  • Tolkien’s influence on other authors and creatives

We invite paper proposals no more than 300 words, for a 20-minute paper with 5 minutes of questions. Panel proposals should be no more than 500 words, for a 60 minute window.

The call for paper’s deadline is midnight Saturday 14th September 2024. You can submit your proposal here. Will and Mina will contact you after the deadline.

See the full call for papers for the Tolkien Society Seminar 2024 here.

Popular Culture Association: Tolkien Studies Area

The Tolkien Studies Area (TSA) welcomes proposals in any area of Tolkien studies. We welcome scholars in all period specializations, from all disciplines, using any critical theory. We encourage interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary as well as collaborative work. The TSA defines "Tolkien studies" as including, but not limited to, Tolkien's Legendarium; adaptations, transformative works, and translations; cultural studies; critical race studies; digital and new media studies; fan and reception studies; feminist, gender, and queer studies; literary studies; medieval and medievalist studies; media and marketing; religious studies; source studies; tourism studies; and translation studies.

Academics, independent scholars, graduate students, and undergraduate students are invited to submit individual paper proposals, paper session proposals, and/or roundtable proposals. Presenters may present one paper and participate in one roundtable session.

All presenters must join the Popular Culture Association as members as well as pay a registration fee to attend the conference. These are separate fees that have been restructured to a tiered system taking into account that PCA members range from undergraduates to retirees, with salaries ranging from part-time, minimum wage to retiree pensions and social security.

All PCA sessions are scheduled in 1.5-hour slots. Paper sessions consist of four presenters, each speaking for fifteen minutes, followed by a group Q&A.

Roundtables are informal interactive discussions between five to seven participants and the audience. A roundtable focuses on a timely topic and is designed to raise questions and brainstorm for future scholarship. If you have an idea for a special topic for an academic journal issue or for an anthology, email Robin to find out how to organize a paper session and/or roundtable on the topic!

For individual paper proposals, please submit contact information (name, institutional affiliation [or "independent scholar"], e-mail address, and telephone number), your presentation's title, and a 500-word proposal describing your topic, chosen theory, methodology, argument, and its relevance to current scholarship.

For a paper session proposal, please submit your contact information, all the presenters' contact information, and a 100–300-word proposal for the session. All participants for your proposed paper session or roundtable must register for the conference and submit their individual proposals through the PCA database so they can be added to the paper session.

If you wish to organize a roundtable, please contact me directly at robinareid@fastmail.com. Only Area Chairs or PCA Admins can enter roundtables into the PCA database. Please note that the TSA can schedule only two roundtables; however, there are no limits on the number of paper sessions we can present!

The 2025 PCA Conference will be held in-person at the Marriott in New Orleans, from April 16-19, 2025.

See the 2025 PCA Conference website to submit paper proposals. Proposals are due by November 30, 2024.

Call for Proposals: Anthology on Women and Gender

We invite submissions for an anthology focused on women and gender in Tolkien’s writings, ‘Great Heart and Strength:’ New Essays on Women and Gender in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien. In 2015, Janet Brennan Croft and Leslie A. Donovan published Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J.R.R. Tolkien, the first volume dedicated to the subject of women in Tolkien’s works and life, which collected the major milestones of feminist scholarship in Tolkien studies alongside new essays. Since then, feminist scholarship and gender theory has flourished in and outside of Tolkien studies. This volume will honor Croft and Donovan’s work and build on the past decade of feminist scholarship in Tolkien studies by presenting a new collection of essays on women and gender in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Please send your proposal (no more than 300 words) and a short bio (100 words) to cami.agan@oc.edu by March 15, 2025.Working bibliographies encouraged.

Proposals should focus on women and gender in the legendarium or in non-legendarium texts by J.R.R. Tolkien, reflecting contemporary feminist and intersectional theory. Proposals may also focus on non-binary, trans, and gender fluid interpretations, as well as non-anthropomorphic topics such as landscapes and environments. All proposals should convey a thorough knowledge of previous feminist scholarship in Tolkien studies as well as current theory outside of Tolkien studies. We highly encourage intersectional work, which analyzes how gender intersects with other aspects of identity (such as race, sexuality, class, etc.).

Topics may include but are not limited to:

  • Female characters in the legendarium
  • Female characters in Tolkien’s non-legendarium works (such as The Fall of Arthur, The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun, etc.)
  • Non-binary, trans, and gender fluid interpretations of characters
  • Landscapes, environments, and material culture
  • Historical conceptions of gender
  • Intersections with race, sexuality, socio-economic class, etc.
  • Postcolonial analyses
  • Women and gender in adaptations of Tolkien’s work
  • Women scholars of the legendarium and/or women-centered treatments of Tolkien’s legendarium

Mythcon, the conference of the Mythopoeic Society, is scheduled for August 2025, and its theme is Women and Gender in Sci-Fi Fantasy, and we hope to organize several panels from the accepted submissions.

Mythopoeic Society Online Midsummer Seminar: Women and Gender in Mythopoeic Fantasy

The Mythopoeic Society invites paper submissions for an online conference that focuses on intersectional feminist approaches to women and gender in fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction or other mythopoeic work. While the focus of this seminar is women and gender in mythopoeic works, we encourage proposals that acknowledge and analyze the intersectionality of gender with other aspects of identity, experience, and embodiment, including the non-human. Proposals should engage with developments in women and gender studies that both acknowledge and seek to move beyond the work of Perilous and Fair, drawing on theories and methodologies from recent years.

Papers, panels, and roundtables from a variety of critical perspectives and disciplines are welcome. We are interested in ANY form of media — text, graphic novels, comics, television, movies, music and music videos, games — as long as it can be described as fantasy or otherwise mythopoeic. We also welcome papers on the work of either of our Guests of Honor.

Each presentation will receive a 50-minute slot to allow time for questions, but individual presentations should be timed for oral presentation in 40 minutes maximum. Two or three presenters who wish to present short, related papers may also share one 50-minute slot.

Individual proposals (~200 words) with bios (150 words, maximum) should be sent to: oms-chair @ mythcon.org by March 31, 2025.

Group (two or three presenters) proposals should group the individual proposals together to send to: oms-chair @ mythcon.org by March 31, 2025.

Working bibliographies are welcome, but not required.

The seminar will be held August 2-5, 2025 on Zoom and Discord.

The full call for papers and more on the midsummer online seminar can be found here.

Coming Soon: Call for Proposals for McFarland's Critical Explorations in Tolkien Studies Series

We are sharing this information on behalf of Robin Anne Reid:

I recently signed a Letter of Agreement with McFarland Publishers to become the series editor for a new series, Critical Explorations in Tolkien Studies. The series will open for proposals in 2025 after I assemble an advisory board.

Scholars can submit proposals in either of two tracks. The first track is for single-author or collaborative monographs and edited collections written for academic experts that should be between 70-100K words long. The second track is for shorter Critical Companions, between 40-50K words long, written for a general audience including but not limited to students and fans. Submissions for both tracks will go through a double-blind peer review process.

Proposals on topics relating to Tolkien's published works as well as to the edited posthumous publications; the adaptations for film, television, and games; the translations; and fan transformative works (textual and visual) or other reception studies may be submitted to either track.

While peer-reviewed scholarship is a professional necessity for tenure-track and tenured academics, there is also value in shorter works, informed by critical theories, that focus on an aspect of single work or a thematic group of works, especially ones that have received less critical attention than The Lord of the Rings. The Critical Companions are designed to introduce a more general audience to analytical approaches and the scholarship in Tolkien studies by situating works in their socio-historical contexts; explaining how the text or texts fit into the field of Tolkien studies; and modelling how to apply critical theories to analyze primary texts.

The primary goals of the series are to add significant original contributions to Tolkien scholarship by developing and to create and support greater diversity in the field by embracing a wide definition of what Tolkien studies includes in relation to authors, texts, topics, theories, and methods.

Both single author and collaborative works, especially those foregrounding intersectionality, are explicitly welcome from authors without regard to ability status, age, caste, class, ethnicity, gender, nationality, religion, or sexuality. Approaches can include but are not limited to theories and methods from class studies, cultural studies, critical race studies; digital and new media studies; fan and reception studies; feminist, gender, and queer studies; film studies, languages and linguistics, literary studies (any period); medieval and medievalist studies; pedagogical studies, modernist and postmodernist studies, media and marketing studies; religious and theological studies; source studies; stylistics, and tourism studies.

Contingent faculty, early-career faculty, graduate students, independent scholars, tenure-track and tenured faculty in the Americas and worldwide who are trained in any discipline and period specialization are invited to submit proposals in either track and to consider applying to become m become a member of the advisory board.

The call for applications to the advisory board will be circulated shortly. Please email robinareid@fastmail with any questions you may have.

Tolkien at UVM 2025: Tolkien and War

The theme for the 2025 Tolkien at UVM conference will be Tolkien and War. The conference will be held on April 5, 2025, at the University of Vermont. Recent conferences have been hybrid and welcomed presentations and attendees online as well.

Signum University Regional Moots

These small, regional conferences are held at various dates and locations. See the Regional Moots page for more details.