I Really Need to Cut Down on Conference Presentations and Just do PCA next year . . .
. . .Good Intentions Destroyed by Two Recent CFPs [argh]
So, conferences are really REALLY fun (according to my definition of “fun” which involves nerding out and hanging with a bunch of people who love what I love and have interesting things to say about it), but they take huge amounts of time and energy (and $$$). So I’m trying to cut down.
I have to do the PCA (because I chair the Tolkien Studies area!), and that’s a f2f event in Chicago next year. But surely, I thought, I could restrict myself to only one conference in the spring.
HAH! I have no willpower!
Two incredible CFPs/themes that are just my jam appeared on my radar. Darn.
Well, two of them are based on a project I’ve been working at on and off since 2019, so I’m not starting completely from scratch . . . . the third is new, starting completely from scratch, but is about one of the “must read, re-read, and buy everything she publishes” list of writers whose novels, novellas, and stories I keep re-re-reading, and since the conference theme is “Something Mighty Queer,” that’s an approach I’m familiar with . . . .so . . . . .
*admires shiny retroactive rationale for doing what I wanted despite Previous Resolution*
The three proposals below are listed in the order I submitted them, not the order I’ll be presenting (if they’re accepted).
I. Proposal submitted to the Tolkien Studies Area of the Popular Culture/American Culture Association (Chicago, March 27-30 March 2024)
“‘Really I'm an atheist, but I'm not the kind that yells at people’ Atheist Readers of J.R.R. Tolkien's Legendarium”1 (accepted)
Scholarship on the topic of religion and Tolkien primarily focuses on identifying Pagan and/or Christian elements in the fiction itself while assuming that readers are either Christian, or pagan. Reception, or reader response, scholarship, which has been rather sparse, is beginning to move beyond articles or book chapters to more significant data collection and more significant analysis. The recent work includes: Dawn Felagund/Dawn Walls-Thumma's two fanfiction survey projects; William Fliss's "Oral History" project at Marquette University; and Luke Shelton's 2020 dissertation on young (under age 18) readers' responses to Tolkien's work. The three projects are dissimilar in scope and methodology to each other and from mine which is the only one focusing on secular readers and the only one to collect demographic data beyond age, gender, and state/country of residence.
In this presentation I analyze the responses from the 45% (51/112) of my respondents who identified themselves to varying degrees as atheists on my 2019 survey, "Atheists, Agnostics, and Animists, Oh, My!: Secular Readings of Tolkien" in the context of hostility toward atheists in the United States and the world. Scholarship on public attitudes toward atheists in the United States show that they are among the groups perceived most negatively by Americans although in recent years those attitudes are beginning to change as a greater percentage of Americans identify as secular, humanists, or as "nones," meaning never attending any religious institution (Tevington). A 2017 study consisting of 3000 participants in thirteen countries analyzing attitudes toward atheists shows that negative attitudes are held in the majority of countries (Gervais, et. al.)
Given the historical and contemporary prejudices against atheists in the U.S. and in the world, I think it is important to explore how atheist readers of Tolkien's define themselves and their interpretation of Tolkien's work in the context of negative attitudes and the growing popularity of the Christian nationalist and other far-right extremist movements in the U.S., an ideology that exists in regard to Tolkien's work.
Works Cited
Fliss, William. "Tolkien Fandom Oral Histories Éoreds 1-8." e-publications Marquette, Raynor Memorial Libraries, Marquette University, August 1, 2019, Link.
Gervais, W., Xygalatas, D., McKay, R. et al. Global evidence of extreme intuitive moral prejudice against atheists. Nature Human Behavior, 1, 0151, 2017, Link.
Shelton, Luke (2020) 'Small Hands Do Them Because They Must': Examining the Reception of The Lord of the Rings Among Young Readers. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 2020, Link.
II. Proposal submitted to Bayou Moot (hybrid conference, Dec. 2, 2023) (under consideration)
“What DO Women Like About Tolkien’s Legendarium, Anyway?”
Questions about Tolkien’s female readers (a number of male fans and critics think there are none) and about Tolkien’s female characters (if you have not read Janet Brennan Croft’s and Leslie Donovan’s Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J.R.R. Tolkien, please do so immediately) abound. Few Tolkienist scholars (even the women ones!) think to ask women fans of Tolkien what they like. In this presentation, I will use information provided by women and non-binary and agender readers of Tolkien’s legendarium drawn from two data-sets. The first data-set consists of the responses from 55 women and 9 agender/nonbinary/”no answer” participants from my “Atheists, Agnostics, and Animists” survey. The second consists of the responses from 441 women and 14 nonbinary/”no answer” participants from William Fliss's The J.R.R. Tolkien Fandom Oral History Collection (data-set downloaded October 6, 2023). My presentation will focus on a key word analysis of responses to one of my original survey’s eight questions (6. What makes Tolkien’s works important to you?) and the complete transcripts of the Marquette interviews which limited the respondents to three minutes to answer three questions: “When did you first encounter the works of J. R. R. Tolkien?; Why are you a Tolkien fan?; What has he meant to you?”
III. Mythopoeic Society’s Online Midwinter Seminar, Feb. 17-18, 2024: Something Mighty Queer (virtual, not yet submitted, so in process—in fact, I tweaked it slightly today before posting here, and there may be more changes before I submit).
Wide Seas Islander, Asexual, & Autist:
The Intersectional Mythopoeic Characterization of Cliopher (Kip) Mdang
Victoria Goddard’s Nine World Series, consisting of seven interlaced sub-series containing, as of the writing of this proposal, twenty longer works (novels and novellas) and four collections of short stories are a tour de force of mythopoeic worldbuilding, genre-blending, and queer characterization. I completely agree with Alexandra Rowland whose 4000-word review-essay at tor.com provides ample proof that “You [all] Should Really Be Reading Victoria Goddard’s Nine Worlds Series.”
In this presentation, I analyze how Goddard’s intersectional characterization of Cliopher (Kip) Mdang, a co-protagonist or point of view character in the “Lays of the Hearth Fire” sub-series, queers a number of the major conventions of epic fantasy while creating a strongly mythopoeic work of fantasy.
Cliopher/Kip’s intersectional identity as a Wide Seas Islander, an asexual, and an autist meets the sixth of Alexander Doty’s definitions of “queer” as:
those aspects of. . . textual coding that seem to establish spaces not described by, or contained within, straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual or transgendered understandings and categorization of gender and sexuality—this is a more radical understanding of queer, as queerness here is something apart from established gender and sexuality categories, not the result of vague or confused coding or positioning (Doty, pp. 6-7).
The narrative foregrounds the importance of Cliopher/Kip being a Wide Seas Islander, a national identity dismissed by most of the Last Emperor’s court as “primitive,” and establishes the specific parameters of his asexuality in At the Feet of the Sun. Characterizing him as an autist is my interpretation of a number of his characteristics and behaviors as described in the series.
Works Cited
Doty, Alexander. Flaming Classics: Queering the Film Canon. Routledge, 2000, Link.
Goddard, Victoria. “Reading Order.” Victoria Goddard. Accessed Oct. 16, 2023, Link.
Rowland, Alexandra. “You Should Really Be Reading Victoria Goddard’s Nine Worlds Series.” Tor.com. Oct. 20, 2021, Link.
I know many of you reading my posts are into sff, nerding out, and queer approaches to said sff, so, you know, come on in, the water’s fine!
I submitted this abstract to the Tolkien Society’s Online Seminar, Tolkien and Religion in the 21st Century. It was rejected, so I submitted it to the PCA TSA (which, disclosure, I Chair so I knew it would be accepted!). The organizer’s email to me explained that they received 60 proposals for 13 slots! That means that the rejection meant that my topic did not fit with the program they were building. And since I already did one presentation for them on the “Queer Atheists” part of my project, I can see it would not make sense to have another “atheists” presentation so soon. Then there’s the issue of whether or not “atheism” is a religion (which is debated—just Google “is atheism a religion” if you want to see the arguments!). The link above leads to the Society’s program which will be November 26, 2023. Registration is free, and the thirteen presentations look absolutely fantastic and ground-breaking, so I’m looking forward to hearing them. And I will be able to enjoy them all without having to worry about finishing my presentation and presenting!