Around the World and Web

"Comrades of the Ring" by Joel Merriner (Foreign Policy)

Joel Merriner, a scholar of artwork based on Tolkien's legendarium, tackles how Soviet artists enacted their visions of Middle-earth within an authoritarian regime:

It has been 20 years since the premiere of film director Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring. As Amazon approaches completion of principal photography on season one of their $465 million TV reimagining of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Second Age, a continuation of the epic neo-medieval visuals that have become synonymous with Middle-earth appears inevitable.

However, the emergence in April of Leningrad TV’s Khraniteli (“Keepers”), a “lost” two-part 1991 Soviet television retelling of Volume I of The Lord of the Rings, has provided Western and young Russian Tolkien fans alike with brief but colorful insight into an alternative vision of the tale. This delightfully lo-fi production, with its earworm opening song, rudimentary special effects, and cobbled together costumes, has been labeled by some as symptomatic of a country on the brink of collapse. But, in fact, Khraniteli represents a rich sub-culture of resourcefulness and creativity in the face of oppression: the world of Soviet Tolkien.

Continue reading "Comrades of the Ring" on the Foreign Policy website.

Call for Proposals: Once and Future Fantasies Conference

Submissions are invited for the first conference co-sponsored by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts to take place outside North America, which will be hosted by the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic at the University of Glasgow on 13-17 July 2022.

The art of the fantastic has never been more visible than it is today. Streamed, read and written, drawn, painted, designed and modelled by amateurs and professionals, performed and played in theatrical events and games, and marketed the whole world over, the art of the fantastic occupies every available cultural niche with unprecedented energy and enthusiasm. This conference asks what the fantastic in the arts has to offer at this time of crisis, rooted as it is in the distant and recent past while remaining extraordinarily sensitive to the shifting landscape of the present and the infinite possibilities of the future.

The conference committee welcomes proposals for individual twenty-minute papers, pre-formed panels of three twenty-minute papers under a coherent theme, and roundtable discussions with three to six participants (ninety-minute sessions).

Suggested topics can include but are not limited to the following:  

• Fantasies of history and imagined futures
• Historical and contemporary fantasy media  
• Changes in the definitions of fantasy and the fantastic through history 
• Fantasies of national/cultural belonging and identity  
• Fantasy and the major challenges of the present moment 
• Fantasy as method for imagining alternative futures 
• Canonicity and its alternatives
• Radical re-imaginings and re-interpretations of SFF ‘classics’   
• Fantasy and temporality (hauntings, time-travel narratives, etc)  
• Fantasies shattering and coalescing  
• The relationship between fantasy and its audiences/consumers/co-creators   
• Borders and their usefulness (or lack thereof) in the fantastic  
• State of the Field-type contributions asking questions such as:  
  • Wither fantasy/fantasy scholarship?  
  • Developing theoretical approaches to the fantastic  
  • Historicising fantasy scholarship  
  • Fantasy pedagogies  
  • How to organise (or unorganise) the discipline?   

We invite submissions from researchers, practitioners and fans of all branches of the fantastic, whether within the academy or beyond it. We are particularly interested in submissions from researchers and practitioners who have been underrepresented in fantastic art and its commentaries. We warmly encourage younger or less experienced scholars and creatives to take part. We are committed to offering everyone a welcoming environment for interaction, speculation and enjoyment. We will also invite creative workshops for those interested in exploring the creative process (separate call for creative workshops to be released soon). 

To submit, please send us a 200-300 word abstract using our submission form by 22 October 2021. See the full call for proposals for more information.

Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang: Four Pinch Hits Available!

The admins of the Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang have four artworks in need of writers. They are willing to be flexible on deadlines!

The Silmarillion

• Galdor through the Ages, feat. queerplatonic/platonic Elenwë & Galdor.
• Mairon’s drag race, complete with fabulous costume art.

The Hobbit Movieverse

• Bagginshield AU, in which Bilbo is sent on a quest by his father and winds up in Erebor pre-Smaug.
• Murder mystery AU inspired by Cluedo, feat. Thorin/OFC, Kili/Tauriel, and Fili/OFC.

They can’t post the draft artworks publicly as it is unfair to the artists, but if any of these might appeal, please email tolkienrsb@gmail.com and ask for access to the gallery to see if you would like to write for one of them.

Call for Papers: Edited Anthology "Race, Racisms, and Tolkien"

Work on race in Tolkien studies began with scholars analyzing medieval sources for the created races of Middle-earth (Brackmann, Chance, Young, Luling, McFadden, Rateliff, Sinex, and Vink). The release of Jackson films accelerated debate over the issue of racisms, resulting in scholarship by film and postcolonial scholars (Battis, Hoiem, S. Kim, Nicklas).

Gaps in the existing scholarship reflect the extent to which systems of exclusions have hampered sustained engagement with the conflicting and complex constructions of racisms, imperialisms, and colonialisms in Tolkien's legendarium. The barriers include, but are not limited to, over-reliance upon arguments about authorial intentionality; about Tolkien being "a man of his time;" and about Tolkien's fictional multicultural marriages. In addition, a mostly white body of scholars have paid minimal attention to the question of Whiteness as a raced category (Redmond).

This project is grounded in contemporary sociological theories of aversive racism which, similar to Critical Race legal theory, focuses on analyzing socio-historical and contemporary systems (intellectual, organizational, institutional) rather than defining racism limited to individual feelings or behaviors. Previous attempts to defend Tolkien's work from sustained critical race, intersectional, or postcolonial analysis of his legendarium fall short today as rising neo-fascist and white supremacist groups claim Tolkien as part of their appropriation of medieval/ medievalist imagery for what they imagine was a "pure white" Middle Ages. Their strategies include using The Lord of the Rings to recruit new members (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/podcasts/the-daily-transcript-derek-black.html).

Virtual attacks against the organizers and presenters at the Summer 2021 Tolkien Society Summer Seminar on "Tolkien and Diversity" make the timeliness of this project clear. Medieval scholars, especially medievalists of color, are challenging white supremacist appropriation through the creation of Race B4 Race and new scholarship on race and the Middle Ages (https://acmrs.asu.edu/RaceB4Rac; Heng, Ramey).

Topics include but are not limited to: Anti-Semitism; Catholicism/Christianity & racism; Colonial Imperialism; Ecological Imperialism; Eugenics, Neo-fascist & White Supremacist Fans; Romantic Nationalism & Tolkien; Social Darwinism; and Whiteness. Work on the legendarium, film adaptations, games, and fan creations (art, fiction, cosplay, especially racebending) is welcome.

Familiarity with Dimitra Fimi's and Helen Young's monographs is strongly recommended. The following approaches are most relevant to the project: critical race, cultural history, intellectual history, intersectionality, fan studies, neocolonial, postcolonial, and reception theories.

Proposals (500 words), a working bibliography, and an author biography (150 words) are due by 10 January 2022. Papers will be due 10 December 2022. Contact Robin Anne Reid at robinareid@fastmail.com for more information. If interested scholars would like a copy of a Working Bibliography on the topic or have questions about their proposal, feel free to email the editor at the address above.

Days of Awesome Ficathon

Days of Awesome is an annual Jewish character ficathon in honor of the Jewish high holiday season. Originally founded by Livejournal user jadelennox in 2007, the goal of this project is to create a venue for fans of all backgrounds to write fic about Jewish characters and their Jewish identities–which are all-too-often under-represented in canon and fanon, and, when they are represented, they’re often represented as Jewish in name only.

We’re also here because while we love other holiday fic challenges, they so frequently don’t correspond with holidays that are important on the Jewish calendar. We wanted to change that with a festive little celebration around the Jewish holiday season!

Days of Awesome has a collection on Archive of Our Own that will open on Erev Rosh HaShana (Monday, September 6, this year), and stay open through the Hebrew month of Tishrei (until October 6)–a length which spans the entire Jewish high holiday season, and includes the holidays of Rosh HaShana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Sheminei Atzeret, and Simchat Torah!

The only firm requirement is that your focal character be Jewish. If they’re canonically Jewish–great! If they’re not canonically Jewish, that’s okay too. But we would ask that if it is a situation in which you headcanon a particular character as Jewish, or are writing an AU in which they are Jewish, you please make the fic about their Jewishness. If you have a Jewish OC that you want to write about–if, for instance, you want to explore what it would be like to be a Jewish character in the world of the Hunger Games, or His Dark Materials–go for it! Again, we would just ask that the fic be about that character’s (or those characters’) Jewish experiences. If you wanted to be extra festive and seasonal, you could write about some of the characters celebrating one of the seasonal holiday, or a fic on one of the themes that is explored throughout one of these days.

All fandoms are game, and there are no length requirements, and you can upload as many pieces as you’d like within the month.

The Days of Awesome tumblr has more information about the ficathon.

Call for Papers: Trans Fandom (Transformative Works and Cultures)

The scholarly journal of the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), Transformative Works and Cultures, is currently accepting submissions for its special edition "Trans Fandom." Since its inception as a field, fan studies has been obsessed with gender, yet discussions of gender have tended to focus on binary genders, with other gender expressions often pushed to the margins, enclosed in parentheses, mentioned but not engaged, or highlighted as areas of future research. Although fan scholars have acknowledged the existence of trans fans and emphasized the importance of gender nonnormativity in many aspects of fandom, and although queer and trans theories have been utilized in analyses of fans’ transformative works and fan behaviors, surprisingly little work has focused on trans fans, trans ways of doing fandom, and depictions of trans bodies within fan works. Only recently have serious considerations of what fandom might mean for trans individuals and trans considerations of fandom emerged.

This special issue seeks to widen our knowledge of trans fandom. We invite submissions that engage with trans theory as a lens for analyzing fandom, case studies of trans fans’ experiences of fandom, considerations of trans bodies in fan fiction, trans theorizations of cosplay cross-dressing, and so on. In particular, we seek work that centers trans people—that is, individuals who express their gender identities in a variety of ways, including but not limited to transgender, transsexual, nonbinary, gender fluid, genderqueer, agender, intersex, or otherwise gender nonnormative.

We welcome both longer conceptual pieces (6,000–8,000 words), case studies (5,000–7,000 words), and shorter symposium pieces (1,500–2,500 words), which might include editorials, reflections, commentaries, synopses of relevant earlier research, and so forth.

Potential topics include but are not limited to:
            * Trans bodies in fan fiction, fan art, and other transformative works.
            * Using trans theory as a lens for considering cosplay, fan art, reader response/audience reception, etc.
            * Trans fans' experiences of fandom.
            * Trans genealogies of fandom.
            * Intersectional and decolonized considerations of trans fans and fandom.
            * Teaching trans studies with/through fandom.
            * Demographic and generational changes in fandom.

Papers are due January 1, 2022. See the full call for papers for complete guidelines and more information.

Tolkien Meta Library

The Tolkien fandom has over the decades collaboratively created so many pieces of headcanons and meta interpretations, but the posts floating around in fandom spaces can be easily lost or overlooked. Especially all the posts languishing on inactive pages until someone happens to find and share them again.

Thus the Meta Library project to store and organize them! A fun and useful resource for the fandom to read existing world-building contributions, and to make previous work on a topic easy to access, build upon and credit. Because this is intended as a resource, the individual analyses are not necessarily being endorsed nor are necessarily in agreement with each other.

View or contribute to the Tolkien Meta Library here!

Call for Proposals: Tolkien Society Autumn Seminar: "Translating and Illustrating Tolkien"

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 has so far held two seminars in 2021 (Twenty-first Century Receptions of Tolkien and Tolkien and Diversity) and their online setting has seen increased interest with over 700 attendees from 52 countries at ‘Tolkien and Diversity’. We are delighted to be running 2021’s third and final seminar, which will be held online and will be free for all, on the theme of "Translating and Illustrating Tolkien." The date of the seminar is 6 November 2021.

Tolkien’s appeal has led to his fiction and non-fiction being translated into over fifty languages. The art of translation is immensely complex and when discussing the Dutch translation of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien himself saw the task as “formidable”, offering his own supportive intervention to achieve a satisfactory result. The author’s invented names and languages prompt the question of how the translator should approach Tolkien’s immense mythology. Recent scholarship has emphasised the need for a wider range of Tolkien’s work to be translated in order for readers to gain a fuller understanding of Arda and the author’s development. But with a wealth of translated texts existing already, this seminar hopes to spark new interpretations about old texts and for unacknowledged translations to be brought to light and examined.

An illustrator of his own work, Tolkien had a keen eye for the visual representation of a text. He admired the work of illustrators such as Pauline Baynes, Cor Blok and Ingahild Grathmer (the Queen of Denmark) and others who illustrated the original English and translated versions of his texts. The manner in which illustrators have engaged with Tolkien’s stories varies dramatically and can often be influenced by culturally specific ideas. This seminar hopes to re-examine renowned illustrations of Tolkien’s work while calling for new or overshadowed illustrations to be discussed.

Papers may consider, but are not limited to the following:

• Translations/illustrations of Tolkien’s fiction/non-fiction
• The role of the translator/illustrator
• Translations/illustrations and their context
• Translations’/illustrations’ reception

The Tolkien Society invites abstract submissions of no more than 300 words, for a 20-minute paper with 5 minutes of questions. The call for paper’s deadline is the end of the day Friday 3rd September.

See the full call for proposals for more information and submission information.

Tolkien Villains Week, August 16-22

Tolkien Villains Week is a new fandom event that runs from 16-22th of August, 2021 on Tumblr. It is designed to celebrate the darker side of Tolkien’s work, or its villainous characters. During Tolkien Villains Week, fans are prompted to write, draw or make content focusing on the antagonists of the Tolkien universe, along with looking into the darker deeds performed by those traditionally considered as good.

Tolkien Villains Week accepts all kinds of fancontent, ranging from art, fics, edits, crafts, cosplays, meta, memes… the key thing is that it fits the theme of the event! Participation happens either via the submission form (opens Aug. 16th) or through posting the work on your own blog and tagging it with #tolkienvillainsweek and mentioning this blog @tolkienvillainsweek.

Tolkien Villains Week Rules
Tolkien Villains Week FAQ
Tolkien Villains Week Prompts and Explanations

Darkest Night Exchange: Sign-Ups Open

The Darkest Night is an exchange fest celebrating dark themes in fanworks. You sign up with a list of characters/ships to create a fanwork (either fanart or fanfic) for another person, and someone else will do the same for you. This exchange is run on Archive of Our Own. It's time for Darkest Night 2021 to rise again! Note that the dates have shifted from past years. The Darkest Night schedule:

• Nominations open: August 6 
• Nominations close: August 13 (8:00PM EDT)
• Sign-ups open: August 14 
• Sign-ups close: August 22 (8:00 PM EDT)
• Works due: September 26 (8:00PM EDT)
• Works revealed: October 3 (8:00PM EDT)
• Creators revealed: October 10 (8:00 PM EDT)

Sign-ups open on August 14 and close on August 22 at 8:00 PM EDT. You can request 4-10 fandoms, with 1-20 characters or groups per fandom, as well as 2-40 free-form tags per fandom. You can also choose your medium per request: fanfiction, fanart, or both. Offers work the same way: 4-10 fandoms, 1-20 characters or groups per fandom, and 2-40 free-form tags per fandom. You can choose to offer either fanfiction, fanart, or both. We use OR matching, meaning that you will be matched with someone who requested at least one of the characters/ships, freeforms, and mediums, you offered, but probably won’t match on all. See the Darkest Night community for more on sign-ups.