blog entries: conferences
… By the end of the week I felt like I truly “belonged.” This is what I expected. And the luxury of this expectation is of course the very white privilege that people of color are talking about. I can just show up with a good paper, wear a tweed jacket, and speak with some authority on a topic that I’ve researched and expect that I’ll be welcomed politely, and listened to moderately attentively, at the very least. Not everyone has this experience.…
It’s astonishing how quickly plans can change when faced with a pandemic.…
This year’s International Medieval Congress, held at the University of Leeds from the 6th through the 9th of July, promises to be an extra relevant one for me: its special thematic strand is Borders.
I think I may post a list of all the relevant paper sessions here, but for now I’ll confine myself to only the Tolkien-related sessions.…
The year begins with new software, new hardware, and a strong focus on the top priority: Tolkien’s maps of Middle-earth. And so far, I’ve successfully restricted paper and conference commitments to “stepping-stone” content directly related to The Project.…
2018 began with a failure: I was unable to make the deadline for my “Mapping Mordor” chapter in Walking Tree Publishers’ forthcoming book Tolkien and Literary Wordbuilding. The cancer was gone, but I had neither the stamina nor the focus for this project. My editors were very understanding, and I thank them profoundly for their patience and support.…
I’ll be giving a paper this October at the North American Cartographic Information Society annual meeting in Norfolk, Virginia. If you love maps, mapping, or cartography, consider attending — it’s a very welcoming group! …
Two more papers given at the Mythopoeic Society’s 49th annual Mythcon: The Lord of the Rings Citations: A tour and The Tolkien Art Index: A tour .…
Paper given at the 2nd annual Tolkien Symposium prior to ICMS Kalamazoo…
I don’t, as a rule, discuss personal or family matters here; that’s the role for my personal blog. Nevertheless, I feel I should mention that I’m more-or-less “back” from an unexpected journey health-wise. Details — no doubt too many for some readers, and never enough for others — are at a specialized set of pages at PostHope.com. No more need be said here.
To celebrate, …
Paper given at the 15th annual Tolkien in Vermont conference at UVM:
Paper given at the 1st annual Tolkien Symposium prior to ICMS Kalamazoo:
I’ll be reworking the paper I gave a few weeks ago at Tolkien in Vermont at Brad Eden’s “Tolkien Anniversaries” symposium, held the day before the 52nd International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University.…
Well, it’s about time. I’ve given my first academic paper.… A curious set of circumstances led up to this, but essentially I was prepared to give this paper and was called upon to fill a suddenly empty slot. It worked out well.
Paper given at the 14th annual Tolkien in Vermont Conference at UVM: “Far-away places with strange-sounding names: Endonyms (autonyms), exonyms (xenonyms), and the romance of Tolkien’s toponymy of Middle-earth; or, On the redundancy of Bree-hill, the heady topper of the Brandywine, and how the discovery of Tolkien’s annotated map of Middle-earth by Blackwell’s Rare Books in Oxford extricates Pauline Baynes’s cartographic reputation from the fens of Nîn-in-Eilph.” …
I am very pleased to announce that the annual “Tolkien at UVM” conference finally has a home on the web. Now known as “Tolkien in Vermont,” the conference can be found on-line at https://tolkienvt.org. Vermont Softworks is responsible for its unabashedly spartan design, and is footing the bill for its hosting at Pair Networks.
The University of Vermont has financially supported an annual “Tolkien at UVM” conference for most of its ten-year history. My understanding is that this has not been a large sum, but has been sufficient to pay a speaker’s honorarium and travel fees, as well as to provide a simple breakfast and light refreshments through the day. I was told UVM had found that the bequest which had been funding the event should not have been used for such a purpose (fair enough: these things happen), but that no effort was made by the university to find an alternative source of support or to provide any stop-gap funds even for the scheduled 2013 conference or its engaged keynote speaker.
Friends and colleagues Mark Kaminsky, Sandy Bolm, Andrew Peterson, Dr. Marc Zender, and me at the third Conference on Middle-earth. Thanks, Andy, for the photo! …