Stuck in trains for hours yesterday, I was revisiting favourite passages from The Lord of the Rings. It’s almost a cliche to say that every re-reading rewards you with new details of Tolkien’s invented world that you hadn’t quite noticed…
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…
Tolkien and the Welsh language (and other news)
I had hoped to post more often on this blog, but this term has been unusually busy. There have been a lot of great opportunities and many exciting projects are in the pipeline, but time has flown and here we…
On Hobbits and Poetry: Musings on Newly Published Letters by Tolkien
Tolkien scholars and fans alike have been extremely lucky to have witnessed a flurry of recent publications of Tolkien’s works such as The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún (2009), The Fall of Arthur (2013) and Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary,…
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…
A much delayed update: Salem Press’ The Fantastic, (re) reading The Hobbit and Tolkien’s The Fall of Arthur
It’s been a while since I have had a chance to update the News section (I am on maternity leave, with all the joys and tribulations that this encompasses!) so some most of the announcements here are a few months/weeks…
Dublin, Wurzburg and Hobbit Day
In the last few weeks I took part in two brilliant conferences in Ireland and Germany. Tolkien: The Forest and the City was held at the School of English at Trinity College Dublin, on 21st-22nd September 2012. I presented a…
Return of the Ring and Tolkien Library Interview
This August I took part in the Tolkien Society’s major event since 2005, The Return of the Ring (16-20 August), a celebration of Tolkien on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the publication of The Hobbit. This was a…
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…