Conference Paper
An audio or video presentation of a paper read at a conference.
Grief, Grieving, and Permission to Mourn in the "Quenta Silmarillion"
Published on 12 April 2024 | Conference Paper
In the Quenta Silmarillion, the narrator of The Silmarillion allows characters to experience grief and express mourning in different ways, reflecting the biases that he brings to the text.
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Genre: No genre listed.
Characters: Pengolodh
Pairing: No pairing listed.
A Fanworks Ecumenopolis: Tolkien Fanfiction Archives and the Implications of Consolidation
Published on 14 October 2022 | Conference Paper
Presented at the Fan Studies Network North America conference in 2022, this presentation uses the concept of the "world city" or ecumenopolis as a metaphor for the infrastructure for archiving fanworks in the early 2020s, taking Tolkien fanfiction as a case study. As the extreme archival fragmentation of the Tolkien fandom gave way to growing consolidation onto the Archive of Our Own, questions arise concerning the future of fandom archiving and whether this consolidation poses risks of not just data loss but cultural loss as well.
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Characters: No characters listed.
Pairing: No pairing listed.
(Re)Archive: The Rise and Fall (and Rebound?) of Independent Fanfiction Archives
Published on 9 October 2023 | Conference Paper
Early online fandoms had multitudes of small, often highly specialized fan-run archives. Presented at the Fan Studies Network North America 2023 conference, this presentation looks at archive trends in the Tolkien and Harry Potter fandoms, considering what factors lead to the proliferation, decline, and closure of small archives, including what it means to "rearchive" after an era of high archive closure and consolidation.
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Characters: No characters listed.
Pairing: No pairing listed.
Fanfiction’s Hidden City: Affirmational and Transformational Practices in the Tolkien Fanfiction Community
Published on 18 April 2019 | Conference Paper
Despite more than six decades in existence and nearly two as one of the most consistently dominant fic fandoms, Tolkien-based fanfiction is under-studied in the scholarship and often does not fit how scholarship by fans and academics alike describe "fic fandom." This paper, presented at the 2019 Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference, pushes for recognition of Tolkien-based fanfiction as containing both tranformational elements (as typically associated with fanfiction by scholars) and affirmational elements generally associated with male "curative" fandom.
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Characters: No characters listed.
Pairing: No pairing listed.
The Most Important Characters Never Named: Unveiling the Narrators of The Silmarillion
Published on 6 April 2019 | Conference Paper
This paper, presented at the 2019 Tolkien at UVM Conference, considers the question of who (fictionally) wrote The Silmarillion, what evidence exists for this authorship, and what implications arise when reading and understanding a Silmarillion narrated by a fully developed character.
Finding Footing in a Forest of Fins: Name Etymology as a Characterization Technique of the Finwëan Noldor
Published on 7 April 2018 | Conference Paper
Tolkien often uses etymology to develop narrative by exploring what Tom Shippey terms an "asterisk-world." This paper, presented at the 2018 Tolkien at UVM Conference, explores the concept of "asterisk characterization," or the use of characters' names to develop their personalities and narratives, with a specific emphasis on Fëanor, Finwë, Curufin, and Maedhros.
At the Root of the Tree of Tales: Using Comparative Myth and "On Fairy-Stories" to Analyze Tolkien's Cosmogony
Published on 15 December 2013 | Conference Paper
This paper explores the cosmogony of Middle-earth using the ideas that Tolkien put forth in "On Fairy-Stories," looking especially at how Tolkien drew from cosmogonical archetypes found throughout world mythology to make a creation myth worthy of a believable Secondary World.
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Characters: No characters listed.
Pairing: No pairing listed.
Transformative Works as a Means to Develop Critical Perspectives in the Tolkien Fan Community
Published on 10 January 2015 | Conference Paper
This paper discusses how unique features of the Tolkien fanfiction community prepare its authors to function at a high level in critically discussing Tolkien's texts.
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Characters: No characters listed.
Pairing: No pairing listed.
The Loremasters of Fëanor: Historical Bias in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien and Transformative Works
Published on 13 June 2015 | Conference Paper
Tolkien's Silmarillion contains a pseudohistorical narrator who brings his bias to bear on much of the Quenta Silmarillion. Tolkienfic writers often prefer the characters disfavored by the narrator, using their fanworks to construct an alternate and sometimes corrective narrative from the points of view of characters subject to negative bias.
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Pairing: No pairing listed.
The Borders of the (Fictional) World: Fan Fiction Archives, Ideological Approaches, and Fan Identity
Published on 16 July 2016 | Conference Paper
This paper, cowritten and co-presented at the 2016 New York Tolkien Conference with Janet McCullough John, looks at how the various archives used by Tolkienfic writers created both fragmentation in the fandom and also allowed for distinct cultures to develop within those archives. We explore cultural differences within the various archives and the historical context of the wider Tolkien fandom in which these cultures arose.
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Characters: No characters listed.
Pairing: No pairing listed.
“Thus Wrote Pengolodh”: Historical Bias, Its Evidence, and Its Implications in The Silmarillion
Published on 8 April 2017 | Conference Paper
The fictional author of The Silmarillion impacts how the story is told. This paper, presented at the 2017 Tolkien at UVM Conference, makes the case for Pengolodh as the author of much of the Quenta Silmarillion and explores how his biases manifest in the text.
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Genre: No genre listed.
Characters: Pengolodh
Pairing: No pairing listed.