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February 2025 Calls for Papers and Proposals

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.

Tolkien Society Seminar: Arda's Entangled Bodies and Environments

The relationship between the body and the environment is at the heart of Tolkien’s writing. He even called his secondary world “Arda Marred” after Melkor’s discord led to all matter, vegetal and organic, having a “Melkor ingredient”. Yet even as early as ‘The Book of Lost Tales’ and in his writings not related to the legendarium, Tolkien shows a keen interest in the connection and ongoing relationship between the body and the earth, often linking the land’s health to the beings that inhabit it. Frequently the environs within his writing indicate they might be sentient, suggesting possible greater agency in Arda and his other worlds beyond his humanoid characters. Likewise, over the course of his writing career, Tolkien developed his ideas concerning the body, which play out in complex and even contradictory ways in his metaphysics and within his narratives.

This seminar invites analyses that explore the complexities of bodily experiences and environments. Building on a strong tradition of scholarship on embodiment and ecology in Tolkien’s writings and their adaptations, this seminar invites new and innovative readings of the entangled body and earth across Tolkien’s oeuvre and its adaptions.

Papers may address but are in no way limited to the following topics as they pertain to Tolkien’s writings and their adaptations:

• Bodies (physical, mental, emotional) and the environment;
• The built environment;
• (Non) Anthropocene and the biosphere;
• Medical studies (e.g. disability, ageing, motherhood/reproduction, trauma) and Environmental Bioethics (e.g. environmental law, ethics of the body and earth, climate change, pollution, agricultural practices, biodiversity);
• Temporality and spatiality;
• Intersectional studies (e.g. gender, race, sexuality, religion, disability, age, ethnicity, nationality) of the body and the earth;
• Liminality, borders, and boundaries;
• Travel and ecological symbiosis;
• The body, food, agriculture;
• Technology and industry;
• Enlightenment (e.g. rationality, categorisation, progress, science) and Romanticism (e.g. sensibility, sensation, subjectivity, earth as mental symbol, sublime, beautiful, picturesque, vast and minute);
• Historical perspectives;
• Linguistics and philology;
• Ecology, Dark Ecology, ecoGothic.

The CfP deadline is Friday 28th March.

We invite proposals of no more than 300 words for 20-minute papers with 5 minutes of questions and 500 words for 45-minute panel discussions with 15 minutes of questions. Bionotes for all authors should be no more than 100 words each.

Please submit your paper proposal here.

Please submit your panel proposal here.

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

We are excited to have John Garth as our keynote speaker, and we are encouraging all abstracts but will give priority to those on the theme. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• War in Europe
• War in Middle-earth
• War and Tolkien’s poetry
• Heroic battle poetry
• War and Tolkien’s English
• War in the films/TV shows
• Gender/Sexuality and War
• Psychology and War
• Religion and War

Please submit 200 word abstracts to cvaccaro@uvm.edu by Sunday, February 2nd.

Signum University Regional Moots

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

Journal of Fandom Studies: Open Call for Papers

Journal of Fandom Studies seeks to offer scholars a dedicated, peer-reviewed publication that promotes current scholarship into the fields of fan and audience studies across a variety of media. We focus on the critical exploration, within a wide range of disciplines and fan cultures, of issues surrounding production and consumption of popular media (including film, music, television, sports and gaming).

The editors welcome general papers (between 6000 and 9000 words), interviews and book reviews (between 800 and 1200 words) as well as suggestions for thematic issues.

All articles submitted should be original work and must not be under consideration by other publications.

See the Journal of Fandom Studies open call for papers for more information.

February challenge at tolkienshortfanworks

The February Challenge at tolkienshortfanworks has been posted to the community on Dreamwidth. 

The thematic challenge for this month is: recovery.
This could be the recovery of a person from illness (as Frodo's recovery in Rivendell) or the recovery of a place or a community from any kind of crisis or the recovery of a thing by somebody, whether abstract or concrete: the recovery from plague, the recovery of a crown or a treasure, the recovery of hope, the recovery of vegetation...

The formal challenge is: story-telling.
Your piece should show one or more than one person passing on a story or tale by word of mouth (not excluding sign language). Maybe an opportunity to think about how that can work differently from purely written communication?

As usual, these can be filled separately and freely combined with other prompts, such as the SWG's monthly challenge prompts. 

More details on these challenges in the linked post.

New participants welcome.

Finish Your Fucking Fics February 2025

Ultimately, the goal is to have fun, and finish whatever WIPs you can (without burning yourself out or having a bad time). If you needed a sign to pick up that project you've been putting off, the time is now!

Find the bingo card image here!

Prompts on the card, from left to right:

Top Row

Fandom Trumps Hate 2025

FTH is an online auction of fanworks that generates donations to progressive nonprofits that are working to protect marginalized people. We began FTH in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 Presidential Election, and over the course of the last 8 years have raised over $300,000 for a range of amazing organizations.

Here is this year’s list of supported organizations. We’ll be posting more detailed profiles of each of them over the coming weeks. We also encourage you to look at the Auction FAQ (which has lots of useful information for people thinking about signing up as creators, as well as dedicated sections on bidding and on nonprofit orgs.) If you’re raring to go, you can look at our bidding policies.

Lastly, in a couple of weeks we’ll be kicking off our newly-revived offscreen activism tumblr blog, FTHAction. If you're on tumblr, give us a follow!

FTH2025 Auction Calendar

Monday, January 20th: creator signups open for both the auction and the crafts bazaar

Sunday, February 2nd: creator signups close

Friday, February 21st: browsing period begins, crafts bazaar announcement goes live

Tuesday, February 25th, 8am ET: bidding opens

Saturday, March 1st, 8pm ET: auction bidding closes

Monday, March 10th: craft stalls close

Wednesday, March 12: proof of donations due

Femslash Big Bang 2025

• Write 10k of fic OR create 2 pieces of art for the yearly challenge
• 1k of fic or 1 piece of art for the monthly challenges (optional, for those who want to do something shorter)
• A femslash ship must be the main pairing (others can be included, but as side or background pairings)
• Any fandom goes!
• OFCs, RPF + Crossover all allowed
• Can also be original works not just fic or fanart

• follow our blog for updates
• Updates posted in the #ffbb2025 tag
• Don’t forget to participate in the check-ins
• Emails to a form will be sent out to complete check ins, as well as a post on this blog.
• read this how-to on posting fic for the final challenge

• Sign-ups close on the 28th of February
• Final Due Date for the Big Bang Challenge is August 30th, 2025
• Monthly challenges (separate to the big bang) run from February to November (start on the 1st of the month, and end on the last day of the month).

• AO3 Collection (for past and future entries)
• FAQ

Purimgifts 2025

Purimgifts signups & noms are now OPEN!

@purimgifts is an annual all-fandoms-welcome exchange for fanfic and/or podfic (participant’s choice) with a side helping of art, focused on characters who are at least one of: women, Jewish, or persecuted by evil viziers.

@purimgifts celebrates the Jewish holiday of Purim, which commemorates one smart orphan-girl saving her people from genocide (plotted by the king’s vizier) and becoming a queen while she’s at it. You totes don’t have to be Jewish to participate!

2025 Schedule

SIGNUPS & NOMINATIONS end 12 Jan
DEADLINE Fri 7 March (anywhere in the world)
REVEALS 13-15 March

Got more questions? You can:

1. Send us an ask
2. Join our Discord server here (feel free to bug us for fresh links!)
3. Email us at purim_gifts@yahoo.com

Helpful Links

• Rules
• FAQ
• Helpful Links
• How-To: Signup
• Purimgifts Posting Guide
• Ask-a-Mod

January Challenge at tolkienshortfanworks

The January challenge has been posted to the tolkienshortfanworks community on Dreamwidth. 

The thematic challenge is: small comforts.
A hobbit-like start to the year!
But there are all sorts of small comforts to be had, in all Ages, if we put our minds to it.

The formal challenge is: include a list of ingredients, short or long.
If your small comforts happen to be culinary, that could be an actual recipe.
But it could also be the ingredients of a medical remedy or, in arts and crafts, of ink or dye, etc.
You could go for a metaphorical list of ingredients as well!

The prompts can be filled separately and freely combined with other challenges that allow this. New participants welcome. More details on the challenges at the linked post. 

January 2025 Call for Papers and Proposals

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

We are excited to have John Garth as our keynote speaker, and we are encouraging all abstracts but will give priority to those on the theme. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• War in Europe
• War in Middle-earth
• War and Tolkien’s poetry
• Heroic battle poetry
• War and Tolkien’s English
• War in the films/TV shows
• Gender/Sexuality and War
• Psychology and War
• Religion and War

Please submit 200 word abstracts to cvaccaro@uvm.edu by Sunday February 2nd.

Signum University Regional Moots

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

Journal of Fandom Studies: Open Call for Papers

Journal of Fandom Studies seeks to offer scholars a dedicated, peer-reviewed publication that promotes current scholarship into the fields of fan and audience studies across a variety of media. We focus on the critical exploration, within a wide range of disciplines and fan cultures, of issues surrounding production and consumption of popular media (including film, music, television, sports and gaming).

The editors welcome general papers (between 6000 and 9000 words), interviews and book reviews (between 800 and 1200 words) as well as suggestions for thematic issues.

All articles submitted should be original work and must not be under consideration by other publications.

See the Journal of Fandom Studies open call for papers for more information.

Fandom Snowflake Challenge 2025

Fandom Snowflake is an annual challenge with prompts and tasks related to fandom. Every odd-numbered day we’ll be posting a challenge for the day where you can participate & leave a comment with a link to your post (or just "I did it!", which is also good ^_^). Remember there’s no deadline, so you if miss a challenge on the day, feel free to post it on another day. You may also skip a day if you won’t have fun on the challenge, the Snowflake Challenge is meant to be something fun to start the new year with, don’t strain yourself trying to do everything if you can’t or don’t find it fun!

As for what you can post about: anything that brings you joy & excitement! Here fandom is meant to be a coming together or people sharing a passion. Fanworks can be anything you poured a piece of yourself in, anything you worked on, anything you made that brings you joy!

Prompts

Challenge #1: – Update fandom information
Challenge #2: – Your Fannish Origin Story
Challenge #3: – Talk about a fannish opinion that's changed over time
Challenge #4: – Set Goals
Challenge #5: – Talk about what has improved in your life thanks to fandom
Challenge #6: – Share a favorite piece of original canon
Challenge #7: – Wishlist
Challenge #8: – Fandom Promo
Challenge #9: – Create Something
Challenge #10: – Fandom Firsts
Challenge #11: – Favorite Trope, cliche, kink, motif, theme
Challenge #12: – Rec Post
Challenge #13: – Comment Challenge
Challenge #14: – Create Your Own Challenge
Challenge #15: – Talk about an unexpected joyous moment you experienced last year

Arafinwëan Week 2025

Day 1: Finarfin | Eärwen | pre-Darkening | family, duty, and kingship

Day 2: Finrod | Darkening and Flight of the Noldor | oaths, loyalty, and sacrifice

Day 3: Angrod | Aegnor | Crossing of the Helcaraxë and the War of the Jewels | lordship, allies, and vassals

Day 4: Galadriel | Second Age | choices and regrets

Day 5: Orodreth | Finduilas | textual ghosts | Third Age | heritage, history, and heirlooms

Day 6: Gil-Galad | Celebrían | Arafinwëan OCs | Valinor and re-embodiment | future and legacy

Day 7: Later generations | free choice