Around the World and Web includes announcements and items of interest from beyond the SWG.
Eönwë Week 2024
We are pleased to announce the coming of Eönwë Week, a fandom event dedicated to our favourite Herald. The event will run from August 12th to 18th 2024 on Tumblr.
Prompts
August 12th: Genesis | Air | Almaren
August 13th: Friendships | Herald | Valinor
August 14th: War | Celeg Aithorn | Beleriand
August 15th: Romance | Mercy | Taniquetil
August 16th: Lost Tales | He Of The Sun | Son of Manwë
August 17th: Eagles | Duty | Noldor
August 18th: Freeform
Rules
- Have fun!
- This event should not be the vehicle to characters hate, bigotry, racism, transphobia and other less savoury behaviours. This is a safe event for lgbtqia+ people and behaviours reflecting any type of threats against this community will be blocked without any tolerance. it’s 2024, get over yourself.
The mods hold the rights to arbitrarily refuse someone’s participation to the event following that user’s behaviour toward others in the fandom. - Nsfw / dark content / dead dove are accepted but should be tagged properly.
- No AI generated works will be accepted, including ai generated art, writing, photo manipulation etc.
- Prompts are here as a general guidance, you are free to interpret them as you want.
- Respect other users’ entries. If something is not to your liking you are not entitled to let it known. Simply scroll down. it is that easy.
- Tag your entry with #eonweweek or mention this blog in your post to be reblogged.
Teitho August/September Contest: Do you remember ...?
Our prompt for August/September is “Do you remember . . .”
This prompt can be used for any character, any book, any timeframe in Tolkien’s work! We can’t wait to see what memories you will use for your stories and art this month!
Will you have your characters think back on good times or bad? Difficult days or ones of joy? A simple day or a fraught one?
Is it a thought going back to the Light of the Two Trees? The first sunrise over Beleriand?
The shadows of Menegroth? The caves of Nargothrond? The Halls of Theoden? Sunlight on a river?
Or perhaps three stone Trolls? A raven? Or the taste of strawberries on a spring day in the Shire?
Please do remember to submit your story/art for this prompt to teitho.contest@gmail.com by September 30, 2024!
August challenge at tolkienshortfanworks on Dreamwidth
The August challenge has been posted to the tolkienshortfanworks community on Dreamwidth.
The thematic challenge is: magic trees.
This could be any variety and degree of enchantment, powers or sentience: the Trees of Valinor, the White Tree, Old Man Willow, Huorns, Mirkwood, etc.
The formal challenge is: call and response.
This is essentially the idea that there is a leader or lead voice that makes the calls and a group that responds, whether in music and song, in poetry, or in dialogue and maybe other forms of prose.
Typical for call and response are all kinds of working songs from all over the world, choral music with solo voices, and some religious traditions. Think also of cheerleading and political speech-making and any kind of gathering where someone is trying to whip up a mood.
But feel free to adapt in any way you like. At a pinch, your chorus doing responses can be a group of one and you could have just two participants!
Either prompt can be filled independently of each other and combined with other challenges that allow that, such as the SWG monthly challenges.
More details at the linked post.
New participants welcome.
August 2024 Call for Papers and Proposals
Journal of Tolkien Research Special Issue: Asexuality and Aromanticism in Tolkien’s Legendarium
Queer scholarship in Tolkien studies has made great strides in recent years, from David Craig’s “‘Queer Lodgings’: Gender and Sexuality in ‘The Lord of the Rings’” (2001) to Jane Chance’s Tolkien, Self and Other (2016) and Christopher Vaccaro and Yvette Kisor’s Tolkien and Alterity (2017). At a critical juncture of growth, this sub-field is poised to evaluate and address any gaps that exist as the field moves forward. One such gap, in both Tolkien studies and queer studies, is asexuality and aromanticism, which, while part of the LGBTQIA+ umbrella, are significantly underrepresented in scholarship and interpretation.
Asexuality, defined broadly as not experiencing sexual attraction to other people, and aromanticism, not experiencing romantic attraction to other people, convey a spectrum of individual experiences (ace-spectrum, or aspec). Aspec perspectives not only represent these individual identities and experiences but also illuminate and refresh understandings of love, desire, relationships, communities, and culture. Implemented within literary interpretation, an aspec lens offers insights into characters, plots, themes, narrative structures, and much more.
In order to address a gap in queer scholarship in Tolkien studies and to solicit new perspectives that can deepen understandings of Tolkien’s work, we invite submissions for a proposed special issue in Journal of Tolkien Research that focuses on asexuality and aromanticism in Tolkien’s work.
Topics can include but are not limited to:
- Aspec readings of individual characters
- Interpretations of love/relationships beyond (but not necessarily excluding) romantic, sexual, and/or platonic love
- Intersections between aspec theory and gender, disability, race, or other critical theory
- Comparative readings between Tolkien’s work and other fiction
- Amatonormativity or aspec aspects in Tolkien’s work, life, and historical context
- Reception of Tolkien’s work by aspec readers
- Aspec interpretations within adaptations of Tolkien’s work
- Interpretations focused on specific identities within the ace-spectrum, including demi-
- sexual/romantic, grey-sexual/romantic, etc.
Proposals/abstracts of a maximum of 300 words, along with a short bio and working bibliography (not included in word count), should be sent via email to aspectolkien@gmail.com no later than midnight Eastern Time on August 31, 2024.
Tolkien at Kalamazoo 2025
Hosted by the Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University, the International Congress on Medieval Studies is an annual gathering of thousands of scholars interested in medieval studies. The Congress embraces the study of all aspects of the Middle Ages, extending into late antiquity and the early modern period, including—but not limited to—history, language, literature, linguistics, art, archaeology, religion, science, medicine, music, drama, philosophy, gender, sexuality, mysticism and technology, as well as medievalism. The 60th International Congress on Medieval Studies takes place Thursday, May 8, through Saturday, May 10, 2025. Find more at the conference website.
Tolkien at Kalamazoo will be offering a total of eight sessions (paper sessions and roundtables), two of which are co-sponsored. The sessions are a mix of in-person, virtual, and hybrid as identified below. Send 100-word abstracts or complete papers to Christopher Vaccaro (cvaccaro@uvm.edu) and Yvette Kisor (ykisor@ramapo.edu) by the1st of September.
Tolkien and Medieval Conceptions of the Sea (in-person paper session): HYBRID
The Medieval Roots of the Poems of J. R. R. Tolkien (in-person roundtable): HYBRID
Tolkien and Old Norse (hybrid / in-person paper session): HYBRID
Tolkien and Medieval Feminisms (in-person paper session)
Medieval Languages and Tolkien's Language Invention (in-person paper session)
Medieval Resonances in Tolkien's Letters (in-person roundtable)
Fire, Dragons, & Jewels, O My!: Medieval Poems & J.R.R. Tolkien (co-sponsored with the Pearl-Poet Society, virtual paper session)
Return of the Franchise: The Ongoing Reception and Interpretation of Tolkien's Medievalism (co-sponsored with the Tales after Tolkien Society, virtual paper session): HYBRID
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.
Many thanks to Robin Anne Reid and her Online Conference Project for handily compiling this information on a regular basis!
Innumerable Stars 2024
Innumerable Stars is a Tolkien fandom gift exchange for all works by Tolkien or associated with Middle-earth.
People Who Participate in Innumerable Stars are:
- Interested in and excited about multiple Tolkien-based canons.
- Interested in their fellow fans’ creativity in fanfiction and fanart, and excited to explore their own.
- Open to creating and receiving any one of a number of different prompts or ideas.
- Happy to read and comment on the fanwork(s) they receive with thanks first of all, but also to read and comment on other fanworks in the exchange.
People Who Participate in Innumerable Stars will:
- Generally read and create for a variety of slash, gen, het, adventures, fluff, dark, erotica, worldbuilding, etc.
- Create their fanwork following their recipient’s prompts in good faith, and receive the fanwork(s) that have been given to them in good faith also.
- Also write or draw “treats” for others in the exchange, if their own time and inspiration permits after they have completed their assignment,. These are not required but they add to the fun and excitement of the exchange!
- Create their fanwork without the use of AI, be it in writing or art.
What Innumerable Stars is NOT:
You do not have to be open to or interested in every type of fanwork to participate. However, Innumerable Stars is not for anyone interested in just one character, pairing, or scenario. Nor is it for people who find stories or art containing material they are not interested in offensive because it exists. If either of these apply, we wish you well, but this is not the exchange for you.
Schedule
Nominations Open: Sunday, 04 August 2024, 8:00 PM UTC
Nominations Close: Sunday, 18 August 2024, 8:00 PM UTC
Sign-ups Open: Sunday, 18 August 2024, 11:59 PM UTC
Sign-ups Close: Sunday, 01 September 2024, 8:00 PM UTC
Assignments Out: Monday, 02 September 2024, 8:00 PM UTC
Assignments Due: Sunday, 6 October 2024, 8:00 PM UTC
Works Revealed: Sunday, 13 October 2024, 8:00 PM UTC
Authors Revealed: Sunday, 20 October 2024, 8:00 PM UTC
Tolkien Pinup Calendar 2025 Sign-Ups Open
The Tolkien Pinup Calendar compiles a calendar of risque fan art of your favorite Tolkien characters! The majority of the art is commissioned, and in that way, we are helping to support fan artists. In addition to the calendar, Commissioners can also submit fics inspired by the art! There will be an AO3 collection with the fics revealed at the end of the event. Because of the nature and content of the art, the event itself is an 18+ event. More details and rules can be found on the event's FAQ page.
If you are interested in signing up to be a Main Commissioner, click here.
If you are interested in signing up to be an Artist, click here.
If you are interested in being a Pinch Hitter, click here.
To submit any ideas or view those others suggested, take a look at our Ideas Form! Or submit your own idea!
Forgotten Ground Regained: Call for Submissions
The Fall issue of Forgotten Ground Regained is open for submissions. I am especially interested in poetry that explores themes of love, devotion, and desire – themes that are, thus far, relatively sparsely represented in modern English alliterative verse. Submissions should be sent to Paul D. Deane at the following email address: pdeane [at] alliteration.net.
Requirements
- Submissions must be in modern English, but authors should feel free to submit poems that take advantage of the diction, rhythms, and syntax of particular language varieties and communities. I do not discriminate against Scots, Appalachian English, Black English Vernacular, Indian English, or any other language variety, though I do ask that authors be prepared to supply notes to explain any terms or expressions that outsiders to their communities may not readily understand.
- Submissions should make skillful, systematic use of alliteration in ways that use alliteration to reinforce the rhythm and connect important ideas. Overall, I prefer poems that have the strongest impact on readers when they are read aloud. I therefore encourage authors to include links to audio or video versions of their poems in their submissions.
- I would love to see people experimenting with modern English versions of Old and Middle English alliterative verse, with Old Norse forms like ljoòahattr and drottkvætt or modern Icelandic rimur, or with new alliterative forms designed to highlight modern English rhythms and speech patterns. While my first preference is what traditional scholarship calls alliterative-accentual verse, I am also open to alliterative free verse or to alliterative versions of traditional forms, such as the ballad, as long as the alliteration is clearly a structural rather than a decorative feature of the form.
- I am open to work both by contemporary poets and to projects that would normally be considered to fall outside the literary mainstream, such as speculative poetry, SCA Bardic Arts projects, and fan fiction.
- There is no hard upper length limit, though poems more than five to six pages in length are likely to be published separately on the website, with links provided from the Fall issue, rather than being included directly in the pdf magazine. Note that I love both both the lyrical and the narrative turns in poetry, so longer narratives will be given careful consideration.
- Please submit your poem in the body of your email. I will not open attachments.
Submissions for the Fall Issue must be received by September 15th, 2024.
Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang (TRSB) 2024
First conceived in 2018, the Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang (or TRSB!) is a Tolkien-fandom-wide event celebrating the talent of our fanwork creators. At its core, the event is about bringing together the artistic side of our fandom with the literary talents it possesses, creating bridges between the separate areas of fandom experience for the enjoyment of all. During the late spring, signed up artists submit fan art pieces in progress or finished, which is then posted anonymously in our Gallery. The Gallery is open to the pool of writers who have signed up for the event only. Each writer is then invited to claim a piece of art to write for; the minimum word count is 5000.
We are open to all characters, genres, ships and ratings, and all canons that fall under the Tolkien fandom umbrella. This includes movieverse (i.e. the LOTR and Hobbit trilogies), lesser known works by Tolkien (such as The Father Christmas Letters), and/or other works with a clear link to his life or creative output (for example, Tolkien’s translations and academic texts, the 2019 Tolkien biopic, fan-made films like Born of Hope, and game canons such as Lord of the Rings Online). Crossovers between two or more Tolkien canons are permitted.
When we started this event, one thing we absolutely agreed on was our desire for maximum inclusivity. In practice this means that:
- We encourage participation from all sections of the Tolkien fandom, whether you prefer bookverse, movieverse, game canon, smaller canons, or Tolkien’s academic papers.
- Fan creators should ALL feel safe and able to join in, regardless of experience levels or perceived ability. This means that everybody is welcome, whether they’re a professional artist/writer or a complete beginner, whether they’ve been a fan for decades or fell in love with the films last weekend.
- As far as practically possible, all styles of art and all types of fic are permitted. We do not set restrictions on genre, style, rating or ship, although we do keep NSFW art submissions behind a lock, for the safety of our younger participants.
Above all, the event is supposed to be fun. Fandom should not be a place of difficulty, conflict and stress. With this in mind, we ask participants to be kind, inclusive, respectful and welcoming at all times.
Schedule
March 17 – 2023 Gallery Opens
The Gallery for 2023 is live at last! Enjoy all the beautiful pieces created for last year’s TRSB!
March 24 – Suggestion Form Opens
This form gives potential authors (or anyone else who wants to play!) the opportunity to suggest characters, places and scenarios they would like to see in the submitted art. We will post a link to the form on our Tumblr blog and here on the website. The answers will feed into a publicly available spreadsheet listing the ideas submitted; artists can peruse this to get inspired!
April 14 – Sign-ups Open
We post links to our sign up form on all the usual platforms. You can then sign up as an artist, an author, a beta, a cheerleader, a pinch hitter, or as two or more of these. Please see the ‘Signing Up’ section of the FAQ for more details on what these terms mean.
May 5 – Artist Sign-up Deadline
May 10 – Discord Server Opens
May 13 – Art Draft Due
Participating art submissions must be sent to the mods by this date to be eligible for the Claims Gallery.
For more details on how to do this, see the ‘Art Submissions’ section of the FAQ. Artists may submit up to two pieces of art, for claiming by two separate authors.
May 17 – Art Preview Opens
Our online gallery will be visible to signed up participants only. Signed up authors can browse the artworks and see which pieces appeal to their muses!
May 18-19 Discord Art Talks
Repeating the fun from last year, these will be live chats on discord with mod presence – start times to be announced – where we go through the beautiful gallery and admire the work of our artists.
May 20 – Author Signups Deadline
May 25 – CLAIMS – 17:00 UTC
Authors submit a ranked list of the artworks they would like to claim to write fic for. Claims are on a first come, first served basis. One artwork will be allocated to each claiming author in the first instance; the mods will email you to confirm which piece you have successfully claimed and how to get in touch with your artist. See the ‘Claims’ section of the FAQ for more information.
TBA – Additional Claims
If a number of artworks are left unclaimed, we may allow authors to claim second and third pieces of art to write for. However, we don’t know until after claims night whether this will be needed, so this is likely to be announced at short notice – keep an eye on the blog and on your emails to avoid missing out.
June 7 – Post-Claims Check-in
The mods will email each artist/author pair to ensure that you have successfully established contact – even if you are not planning on a close collaboration, it is polite to check in with your partner, say hello, and make sure you’re both clear on must-haves and do-not-wants. One person from your pair must respond and confirm that you have done this!
June 16 – Free Rein Art Due
We know some artists like to give their authors as much creative freedom as possible and we have a dedicated collaboration option for this (see ‘Art Submissions’ FAQs). However, this means we require these artists to provide finished art to their authors much earlier than artists who are prepared to be more involved. See ‘Completing the Artwork’ in the FAQs for more details on how this works.
June 28 – Check-in #2
The mods will email each pair to ensure everything is on track. One person from your pair must respond – see ‘Check Ins’ in the FAQ.
June 26 – Check-in #3
The mods will email each pair to ensure everything is on track. One person from your pair must respond – see ‘Check Ins’ in the FAQs.
August 9 – Final Art Due
Artists should share a copy of the final art to their authors – but don’t post it yet!
Don’t email it to the mods.
August 16 – Final Check-in (#4)
Deadline to abandon your fic to a pinch hitter. There will be no penalty for dropping out on or before this date.
As per other check ins, except the mods will be providing instructions about promotional posts (see ‘Promotional Posts’ FAQ for more information). We will also ask you:
- Whether you have discussed posting logistics with your artist (if you’re embedding art in your AO3 story, for example)
- Whether you have specific posting needs re publicizing date/time frame (e.g. not wanting us to reblog your art/fic on Shabbat as you will be unable to respond)
August 26 – Art Can Be Posted
August 30 – Final Fic Due In Collection
Authors should post their stories in our AO3 collection with the artwork embedded or linked. (If you are writing a last minute pinch hit we can be a bit flexible with this deadline.)
TBA – Discord Art Reveals Event
September 6 – COLLECTION REVEALS
September 13 – Staggered Tumblr Reblogs Begin
September 20 – Gallery Submission
October 6 – Discord Server Closes
Other Links
- Rules
- Sign-Ups
- Frequently Asked Questions
- TRSB on Tumblr | Twitter | Instagram | Dreamwidth
Acorns and Oak Leaves: A Year of Bagginshield
Throughout 2024, the Bagginshield community Acorns and Oak Leaves offers monthly prompts to encourage new creations of all kinds (i.e. art, fics, gifs, etc) - but don't worry, there are no deadlines. Pick and choose whatever prompts you like, and be sure to tag the @acorns-and-oakleaves blog on Tumblr so we can share your Bagginshield creations!
Monthly prompts for the Year of Bagginshield can be found here.
Around the World and Web Archive
Events listed here are no longer active but are listed on the site for historical purposes.
Fandom Trumps Hate 2023 Bidding Open
FTH is an online fanworks auction, designed to raise money for progressive nonprofit organizations that help and support marginalized people. In the past five years, hundreds of fans have joined forces to raise over $190,000 for a range of progressive organizations.
The moment you've been waiting for has finally arrived - we've processed all the signups, posted and tagged all the auction posts, made all the edits creators have contacted us about, and run all the scripts to open the bidding forms, which means ...
YOU CAN GO BID ON FTH 2023 AUCTIONS!!
Bidding closes at 8:00pm EST on Sunday, March 5. Any bid that registers on the bid sheet with a timestamp after 8:00:05pm (or before 8:00:00am this morning) will not be counted.
If you subscribe to a bidding spreadsheet, remember that it may take a few minutes for it to notify you of a new bid, so don't rely on it in the last moments of the auction.
If you win your auction, we will require proof of your donation to one of the listed nonprofits by 8pm on Sunday, March 12 (a week after auctions close) or your auction may be passed on to the second bidder.
Good luck!
March challenge at tolkienshortfanworks on Dreamwidth
Traditionally, in Tolkien fandom, March is Back To Middle-earth Month (B2MeM), so this month, for our tolkienshortfanworks challenge, we have been inspired by the concept of traveling (back) to Arda.
So here is our thematic prompt and our formal challenge for March:
The thematic prompt is: a map or sign-post.
The formal challenge is: a travelogue; put more loosely, your piece (or part of it) should follow the stations of a journey as a structure.
As always, the two prompts can be filled entirely independently or combined with prompts from other challenges.
In this case, obviously, particularly the prompts of the official B2MeM event; if you are not aware of the event, details can be found here.
More details on tolkienshortfanworks challenges can be found at the linked post. New participants are always welcome and the Dreamwidth community also is open to new contributors independently of the monthly challenges.
Feanorian Week 2023
Feanorian Week will run March 20th-26th. The prompts have been posted.
Sufficiently Advanced Exchange
Sufficiently Advanced is a multifandom exchange for science fiction, fantasy, and horror book canons. This includes novels, novellas, novelettes, and short stories. Nominations are open until March 7th, signups March 8th - 18th.
B2MeM Prompt Board Is Now Live!
Are you looking for a chill way to celebrate Back to Middle-earth Month with us? Look no further! We've prepared 100 prompts for you to use this March!
Felt inspired? Created other Middle-Earth related things in March? You can add your creations to the B2MeM AO3 collection! Feel free to tag us on Tumblr @spring-into-arda, too! But most of all, have an amazing Back to Middle-earth Month and have fun creating!
Signum University Press Open for Submissions
Signum University Press is currently open to new submissions for both scholarly and creative works. They are specifically looking for work from new and emerging authors from underrepresented demographics.
They are looking specifically for:
- Individual, previously-unpublished academic articles or chapters on topics relating to language and literature, in particular those focused on Afrofuturism, ecocriticism, fandoms, the Inklings, Germanic philology, medieval literature, and popular culture.
- Scholarly monographs on the above topics, as well as translations and editions of literary works.
- Individual, previously-unpublished short stories, especially fantasy, science fiction, mythopoeia, fairy tales, secondary worlds, dystopia, Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism, dark academia, superhero tales, and adaptations of classic myths.
The submissions guidelines have specifics about what they accept and how to propose or send your work.
Registration Open for the 2023 International Medieval Congress
Drawing medievalists from over 60 countries, with more than 2,000 individual papers as well as public concerts, performances, excursions, bookfairs and more, the International Medieval Congress (IMC) is Europe’s largest forum for sharing ideas in medieval studies.
IMC 2023 will take place from Monday 03 July to Thursday 06 July 2023 and it is our strong intention, coronavirus restrictions permitting, that there will be both an in-person and virtual component. The special thematic focus for IMC 2023 will be ‘Networks & Entanglements’.
Register for IMC 2023 (closes 5 May 2023)
IMC 2023 Programme
The IMC features a Tolkien Studies track.
Call for Papers: German Tolkien Society, Tolkien Seminar 2023
The 19th Seminar of the German Tolkien Society is supported by Walking Tree Publishers and will take place in a hybrid format (predominantly in person but with online options) at the Seminar for English Philology at the Georg-August-University Göttingen on 27-29 October 2023.
Tolkien himself often sketched places and landscapes during the writing process in order to visualise his literary descriptions. His illustrations for The Hobbit as well as the iconic maps of Middle-earth attest to the high value he placed on visualising and concretising his secondary world. Soon after their publication, his works were also illustrated by other artists or inspired them to create paintings depicting scenes from Tolkien’s tales. Alan Lee and John Howe are probably the best-known visual artists of this category, and as ‘chief conceptual designers’ for Peter Jacksons films, they have shaped the vision of Middle-earth of millions of people – which is currently both reinforced and challenged by the Amazon series Rings of Power. Furthermore, there have always been artists who found their own approach to Tolkien’s work and sometimes create interpretations through visual representation (see, for example, Jay Johnstone’s painting ‘Isildur’).
The aim of this seminar is to bring together researchers from different disciplines and fields to explore the different approaches to visualising Tolkien’s work.
Interested applicants are requested to send a short abstract (no longer than one page) and a short biography as well as their preference (attendance in person or online presentation) to Thomas Fornet-Ponse by 30 May 2023: hither-shore@tolkiengesellschaft.de
2023 Fanlore Challenge
The IFD 2023 Fanlore Challenge is a week-long event organized as part of International Fanworks Day 2023. The Challenge is open to new and experienced editors, and everyone is encouraged to participate!
The IFD 2023 Fanlore Challenge takes place from the 13-19 February, with different editing challenges to complete on each day.
Each day has a challenge suitable for editors at any level, plus a bonus challenge for more experienced editors. It's completely up to you which one you want to complete — you’re welcome to take on both of them if you wish!
Anyone who completes that day's challenge(s) will be awarded a shiny badge! Further down, you'll find instructions on how to get your badges, and how to display them on your Fanlore user page.
If you're new to editing Fanlore, we have lots of guidance and resources to help you get started! Visit our New Visitor Portal to get started, and read our Editing Help page for advice on how to edit pages. You can find all of the Fanlore challenge prompts here.
Maedhros and Maglor Week 2023
This is a fandom event dedicated to exploring the relationship between Maedhros and Maglor! It will run February 19th-25th, 2023. Fanworks of all kinds are welcome (see the Event Guidelines page for details!)
Prompts:
February 19th—Day 1: Aman
February 20th—Day 2: Fire and Water
February 21st—Day 3: Lordship in Beleriand
February 22nd—Day 4: Adornment
February 23rd—Day 5: Blood
February 24th—Day 6: With Elrond & Elros
February 25th—Day 7: Afterwards
You can also find a handy prompt schedule here and on the blog with some suggestions for inspiration related to each prompt!
Fanworks for the event can respond to one or more prompts (interpreted however you wish), or they can be totally unrelated to any prompt, as long as there’s a focus on Maedhros and Maglor. This event is inclusive of all iterations of their relationship: please respect everyone’s interpretations and creations!