Call for Proposals: deadline March 15, 2025

‘Great Heart and Strength:’ New Essays on Women and Gender in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien

We invite submissions for an anthology focused on women and gender in Tolkien’s writings. 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^th, 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.