Having a nearly three-year-old means that I’m always attuned to what’s new on CBeebies and, naturally, there’s a lot of bespoke Christmas entertainment this time of the year, including the ever-popular Christmas panto. Last year it was Peter Pan, the…
Two tiny Tolkienian parallels in Susan Cooper’s reflections
As I have written in previous entry, I am currently working on a monograph on Celtic Myth in Contemporary Children’s Fantasy for the Palgrave Macmillan Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature series. I have, therefore, been reading and re-reading primary and…
Two books, two conferences, and other news
I am on annual leave at last (hooray!) and it’s time for another long-overdue update. It’s been a very busy few months, mainly taken up by working on two books (!) and being involved in a number of events. First…
Tolkien, Fantasy and Medievalism at IMC Leeds 2015
During the last few years I have been attending the Tolkien sessions at Kalamazoo semi-regularly (once every two years, on average). The International Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo, hosted by Western Michigan University, has been running for over 50 years, and the…
Mythgard classes, Tolkien’s Beowulf, JTR, Tolkien Companion and Kalamazoo
It’s been a while since my last update: I am back to lecturing full-time now, and I really hit the ground running this term! Among other modules, I taught Literary Transformations (Year 2), Gothic and Science Fiction (Year 3) and…
Science Fiction Festival, new Mythgard Course and “things Celtic”
It’s been a busy autumn, with my first public lecture after having a baby, new publications in the pipeline and new, exciting academic ventures. On 18-19 October I took part in Literature Wales’ Space, Time, Machine and Monster festival at…
Recent publications, conferences and other news
The last few months too many things have happened that I have not managed to report in a timely fashion – I have been getting into the habit of using facebook for daily and weekly updates, so feel free to…
(Long Overdue) Update!
The last few months have been very busy, including traditional and online teaching (both undergraduate and postgraduate), a public lecture, work on future publications, and some media work. Here is a list of some of the things I have been…
Which Lewis in Oxford?
Lewis Carroll, C.S. Lewis or Robbie Lewis? An Oxford-academic-cum-fantasy-writer, whose “muse” is called Alice; an elderly don (specialist on Lewis Carroll) with secret vices; a girl who literally goes “through the looking glass” (killed by a Persian mirror); and a…