Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Timeless Moments: Russell Kirk, Charles Williams, And Stephen King On The Afterlife, Camilo Peralta

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

What happens to us after death is one of the oldest and most difficult questions. Even the standard response of many Christians, that we go to either Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory, can only partly satisfy, because while we experience the passing of time in a linear manner, those places are said to exist completely outside of time. How, then, can it make sense to speak of “going” to Heaven or Hell after death? Must we not always and forever be there—even during our lifetimes? Russell Kirk, a Catholic historian from Michigan who often speculated about the afterlife in his fiction …

Tolkien, Augustinian Theodicy, And 'Lovecraftian' Evil, Perry Neil Harrison

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

A number of scholars have commented upon Augustine of Hippo’s influence upon J.R.R. Tolkien’s portrayal of evil in his legendarium. However, in his seminal work J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, Tom Shippey pushes back against this perception, noting that there are some forms of evil in the legendarium that do not adhere to the Augustine’s belief that evil is merely a “twisting” of good. This article argues that Ungoliant is one such exception to the Augustinian paradigm because of the uncertainty regarding her origins.This uncertainty complicates the Augustinian view of evil that permeates the legendarium and instead echoes …

Queen's Pride: A Queer Reading Of Star Wars Character Padmé Amidala, Madeleine Loewen

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Ever since Luke Skywalker and Han Solo first appeared onscreen together in 1977, LGBTQ+ Star Wars fans have harnessed the power of queer reading to write themselves back into a galaxy far, far away, despite Lucasfilm’s long-term disapproval of such practices. Nonetheless, there exists little scholarly literature on queerness in the franchise, and even less on the potentially sapphic characters. Queen Padmé Amidala, first introduced onscreen in Episode I: The Phantom Menace, proves a surprising—but no less salient—queer figure in Star Wars. From her intimate relationships with her handmaidens, to her experimentation with gender performativity, to her quiet yet intense …

Queering The Family In Zoraida Córdova’S Labyrinth Lost, Rebekah Rendon

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova focuses on Alex Mortiz, a Mexican-American bruja and her journey to a fantastical otherworld to rescue her family. Alex begins to understand the love and unity that exists in her own blood family, while forging new relationships, thereby creating a found family, or queered family. The topic of this paper addresses queerness and found family dynamics in Labyrinth Lost. While many scholars have written on themes in fantasy and magical realism texts by Latino/a and Hispanic authors, these genres tend to be under-researched in literature for young adults. My argument analyzes Labyrinth Lost as emblematic …

Queer Paths Toward Home: Kinship In Speculative Fiction, Audrey Heffers

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

How are we related? Queer(ed) families—typically framed through terms such as Found Family, Chosen Family, or Family of Choice—are more often formed by agency and voluntary participation than they are by legal or genetic connections. For the purposes of this paper, kin will be defined by affect, behavior, and declaration. The three fictional texts—Are You Listening? by Tillie Walden, Life of Melody by Mari Costa, and I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself by Marisa Crane—will serve as a basis to illustrate how kinship is defined, particularly in queer speculative narratives. Speculative fiction allows for particular metaphors of power. These metaphors …

Queerness In Hirohiko Araki's Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Minna Nizam

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

This paper will explore Queerness in the series Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. The presentation/paper will dive deep into the queer aspects of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, examining tropes throughout the series and its LGBTQIA+ representation. We will be delving into queer protagonists, queer side characters, and LGBTQIA identities present throughout the anime/manga. We will explore the relationships each main character of the franchise has with side characters, to analyze queerness and queer subtext. Quotes and posts/comments made by the series creator, Hirohiko Araki will be used as evidence to prove that the series is in fact Queer with its LGBTQIA …

Introduction To Eleanor Arnason, Works & Reception, David Lenander

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Eleanor is a guest of honor at next summer’ s Mythcon 53, and I’ve been reading her work for many years. I think her novel, and the associated short stories of Hwarhath Stories, provide a fine set of texts for your purpose. There are also queer aspects to many of Eleanor’s other books and stories, for instance in To the Resurrection Station, and some of her shorter fiction. I would certainly review the existing critical literature, and also present some critical comments and reflections on reception of Arnason’s work, and suggestions for further study.

The Gay Bat Of Gotham: Depictions Of Common Queer Stereotypes And Tropes In The Dc Comics Character Batwoman, Tim Lenz

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Expansive superhero comic book universes can be thought of as collective, accretional works of Mythopoeia, generating modern mythologies of fantastical characters while also drawing inspiration from ancient myths of the primary world. The DC Comics’ character Batwoman was initially introduced in 1956 as a love interest of Batman/Bruce Wayne, in part to combat scandalous allegations of Batman’s homosexual tendencies towards his young male sidekick Robin. In 2006, writers Greg Rucka, Grant Morrison, Geoff Johns, and Mark Waid reinvented the Batwoman character for modern audiences as the alter ego of ‘Kate Kane,’ Bruce Wayne’s cousin, who was a lesbian of Jewish …

Queering The Problem: Destabilizing Normative Tropes In Jonathan Stroud’S Lockwood And Co. , William Thompson

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Holly Munro, the office assistant come agent in Jonathan Stroud’s young-adult series Lockwood and Co., is the sole character in the five books to hint at living in a queer relationship. Lockwood and Co. is a small agency in London, fighting against the Problem, the nightly recurrence of ghosts and specters. In The Empty Grave, the final book in the series, Holly and Lucy Carlyle are crouched in the kitchen at 35 Portland Row, waiting for an attack of a group of thugs on the house. Holly and Lucy are nervously exchanging confidences, and Holly makes the point that Antony …

Roundtable: Diversifying Our Mythopoeic Bookshelves, Grace Moone

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

2024 is a year in which we’ve all been encouraged to be intentional about reading diversely, and seeking out stories and authors whose perspective differs from our own. During this roundtable discussion, we’ll touch briefly on why diversifying our reading matters, discuss strategies for finding diverse books in mythopoeic genres, share some of our favorite book recommendations, and ask attendees to share some of theirs. This discussion will also be open during the upcoming meal break.

“Foul In Wisdom, Cruel In Strength”: Gendered Evil In Tolkien’S Legendarium, Alicia Fox-Lenz

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

In “The Feminine Principle in Tolkien,” Melanie Rawls creates a framework for reading masculine and feminine drives in the characters of Tolkien’s legendarium. Feminine characteristics are inward-facing, focused on the self and inner life, whereas masculine characteristics are outward-facing, focused on affecting the wider society. Shelob and Sauron are used as two examples of the negative expression of these gendered drives: Shelob being so inwardly focused she only devours, and Sauron being so outwardly focused he cares only for world domination. However, other than his outward focus, Sauron doesn’t neatly align with the other negative masculine traits — he is …

More To The Hobbit Than Meets The Eye: Locating The Feminine In Tolkien’S World, Pieter Conradie

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Fantasy is finally learning to embrace its power to create and celebrate queerness. Works such as The Forever Sea by Joshua Philip Johnson and The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon feature queer leads, revealing creative capacities to imagine worlds where queerness is at the centre. But something mighty queer is already present in 1937 at the very dawn of modern fantasy. Following emerging interpretations of The Hobbit, I argue that the hero, Bilbo Baggins, exhibits significantly queer characteristics. In this deconstructive reading, Bilbo’s gender will first be reversed, arguing that his domesticity, intense emotional responses and his …

Keynote With Taylor Driggers - Cruising Faërie: Further Notes On Queering Faith In Fantasy Literature, Taylor Driggers

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

In Queering Faith in Fantasy Literature (2022), I argue that fantasy affords sexually marginalized people the ability to re-vision Christian theology in queer ways, thanks to its fixation on strange bodies, its longing for other worlds, and the ways in which both of these may reflect back on theological narratives of incarnation and salvation. Yet this project raises further questions that remain unresolved: namely, how might the framework of Christian theology constrain, as well as illuminate, queer imaginaries? If fantasy allows us to envision livable lives for ourselves as unruly bodies, just what forms of relating may those lives entail? …

Merging Worlds—Tarot As Ekphrasis For Creative And Reflective Writing, Jacob Budenz

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Although ekphrasis is most commonly posited as a poetic tool—poetry responding to visual art—the practice of ekphrasis at its heart is a merging of worlds in which an artist of any medium interprets a work in a different medium. Likewise, a Tarot reader interprets imagery and symbolism through the medium of speech, applying old archetypes and images to unique, new problems or questions. In this workshop, I will present on the medium of ekphrasis as a poetic form using W.H. Auden’s poetic interpretation of Bruegel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, itself an iconic work of mythopoeic ekphrasis. Then, I …

Speak Through The Drag—The Hidden (Trans-)/Woman In James Tiptree, Jr.’S ‘The Girl Who Was Plugged In’, Ziyang Zhang

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

In 1973, James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon) published a sci-fi novella The Girl Who Was Plugged In and won the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1974. Its male narrator is a time-traveller from a near-future America, where he works for a capitalist company GTX—Global Transmissions Corporation. The heroine "P. Burke [...] willingly allows her grotesque body to be confined in a hi-tech cabinet while her mind remotely operates the beautiful but soulless cloned body of Delphi" (Hollinger 133).

In my research, I apply a framework of trans-feminism in reading The Girl Who Was Plugged In to challenge the binary …

Panel: The Fair And The Perilous: Online Experiences Of A Queer-Focused Tolkien Podcast, Alicia Fox-Lenz, Leah Hagan, Tim Lenz, Grace Moone

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

The team behind Queer Lodgings: A Tolkien Podcast share the social media realities of producing content centered around LGBTQIA+ readings of Tolkien’s Legendarium. Discussion will include uplifting and diverse community events, backlash against the very idea of queer readings of Tolkien, targeted harassment campaigns involving large conservative media news outlets, and attempted erasure of well-documented historical instances of homophobia in Tolkien spaces. We aim to illuminate some of the darker corners of online fandom, and demonstrate the importance of accepting, tolerant spaces in which queer and diverse fans and scholars can share their personal interpretations of Tolkien’s worlds, characters, and …

Ancient Queer Bodies: The Gender Swapping Prophet, Basil Perkins

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Through an intersectional approach which positions sexuality and gender in direct

relation to cultural imperialism (O’Sullivan, 2021; Lugones, 2020), I aim to discuss the origins of Tiresias. (S)he is ubiquitous in ancient mythology: showing up in classicized texts such as Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Homer’s Odyssey. Interestingly too, Tiresias has been received since antiquity in texts such as Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias, Woolf’s Orlando, and MacLaughlin’s Wake, Siren. Each receptive work transforms Tiresias through fantastical contexts and different temporalities. I aim to queer Western notions of temporality, in reading the contemporary along with the ancient. The bulk of my …

"A Legacy Forced, Not Given": "Otherness" And Rape In The Morte Darthur And Tracy Deonn's Legendborn, Lindsay Church

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Arthurian narratives have traditionally worked to establish the collective memory of a shared past that has resulted in them regularly aligning with hegemonic ideologies. The continual retelling and adaptation of the Arthurian narrative can thus be recognized as consistently relying on and upholding a narrow understanding of who is accepted within the borders of Camelot and who is made Othered, and often monstrous, by those borders. However, there has been an increase in scholarship that has begun to read and write Arthurian literature from the ‘Other side’ in a way that asks readers to consider who the Arthurian mythos have …

No Place: The Queer Utopia Of Liminality, Harry Gallagher

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

My proposal is a paper on the inherent queerness of the liminal in Jeff Vandermeer’s works, through examples such as the transitional narrative present in the transformation of the Biologist in Annihilation. Especially pertinent is the inherent fighting of Yonic/Phallic imagery happening between her interpretation of a concrete structure as a tower as opposed to a tunnel, which is important to understanding how the Biologist’s trans-masculinity manifests symbolically in the narrative as antithesis to the other cis women on the expedition. Vandermeer’s liminal space in Dead Astronauts also connects to the characters of Moss, a non-binary life form who exists …

Reading, Rending, And Queering The Web Of Story With The Lens Of “Con-Creation” And Process Theology, Cameron Bourquein, Nick Polk

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Recent scholarship has addressed the connected problems of Tolkien as “Author/Author(ity)” and the exclusivist readings of Tolkien’s work that follow this construction (Chunodkar, Emanuel, Reid). This “constructed Tolkien” seems to parallel common readings of his Legendarium’s own Creator God, Eru—understood as the monolithic “Author” of Ea. Yet “subcreation” within Tolkien’s narrative and extra-narrative works is routinely exhibited not as monolithic but rather as literally (and figuratively) multivocal, and hence inherently queer.

In this paper Cameron will propose that the Legendarium can be read through the lens of “con-creation” (the total choice-making activity of all rational beings) both internally as events …

I'D Rather Be A River Than A Man: The Trans Jewish Golem/ Trans Inequity, Intersectional Ritual, And Jewish Tikkun Olam (Healing Of The World), Dean Leetal, Valerie Estelle Frankel

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

I'd Rather Be a River than a Man: The Trans Jewish Golem Dean Leetal

This critical commentary revisits the Jewish story of the Golem and reads it as a transgender text. Some say that the Golem inspired Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a story famously interpreted by Susan Stryker as an allegory for her own trans experience: living on the edge of society, her humanity debated, defined by a morally questionable medical establishment. But there are important differences between Frankenstein and the Golem. The Golem is brought to life through language, particularly the Hebrew word ‘emet,’ and is an animated clay tasked …

Towards An Ethos Of Discussing In-Corporeal Gender In Fantasy Literature: Part I – A ‘Feminine’ Eldil And A ‘Masculine’ Vala, Luke Shelton

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people engaged with others on social media in ways that they had not before. During this time, I was excited to see many new interpretive communities begin and to listen to the kinds of conversations these groups would have about Tolkien. One such conversation that stuck out to me was the way in which I saw some fans interpret Tolkien’s description of the physical characteristics of the Valar. I also happened to be reading through C.S. Lewis’ space trilogy when I saw many of these conversations. I felt that there were several …

A Queer Reading Of Octavia Butler’S Kindred, Marietta Kosma

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Throughout Octavia Butler’s Kindred the author raises numerous tensions around the notions of accessibility, disability, equality, and inclusion, exposing the crisis of black futures. My analysis focuses on the way that queerness informs the protagonist Dana’s experiences in the context of slavery, her positioning in the contemporary discourse of neo-liberalism, and her positioning in the prospective future. Very few scholars perceive Dana’s subjectivity as an actual state of being that carries value both materially as well as metaphorically. The materiality of queerness has not constituted part of the larger discourse of the American slave system. By examining how Butler renders …

Sauron, Seduction, And The Queering Mechanism Of The Ring, Mercury Natis

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

It has often been argued that Sauron is barely present in the Lord of the Rings, existing as a villainous presence on the margins of the narrative. This paper will argue that Sauron is actually present throughout the entire narrative, as manifested in the Ring, and through the Ring’s presence as a queering device. The Ring acts out Sauron’s seduction mechanism, a defining character trait as portrayed in the Silmarillion. It is this seduction mechanism that allows the Ring to act as a queering agent throughout the narrative. Ring-lust is inherently queer as it projects a male-presented character’s seductive powers, …

Closeted Gays Take Hide, A Lamia Has Been Untied: Bbc Merlin And Queer Experiences Beyond Queer Joy, Anna Caterino

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

A decade after its finale, online fandoms have started labeling Merlin (2008-2012) as “date your bully 101” (theroundbartable), a story written by people “giving each other blowjobs while they talk about how much they deserve servants” (vhagarswattle). In light of the most recent models of queer representation, such takes are to be expected. Even so, Merlin is not a mere case of “hoyay” (Kohnen 201-2012) nor does it engage in queerbaiting or use the “Bury Your Gays” trope. The text is tied to the socio-political landscape of the late 2000s which serves as foundation for the show’s tragedy and, although …

Asexualities, Aromantics, And Autists In Epic Fantasy By Tolkien And Goddard, Robin Anne Reid, Rory Queripel

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

The Mariner (and his wife): Rethinking Aldarion’s (A)sexuality Rory Queripel

“Aldarion and Erendis” (Unfinished Tales) is a rare example in Tolkien’s work of a marriage gone severely awry. Many readings of the tale apportion blame to Aldarion, who is seen as “unwilling” to make the marriage work (Fitzsimmons, 2015), cruel and unfeeling towards Erendis, who herself is characterised as resentful and unaccepting (Rosenthal, 2004). However, these readings rely on an assumption of a cisheteronormative and, more importantly, allosexual relationship between the couple.

This paper proposes an alternate view of Aldarion and his role in the story, suggesting the possibility that …

Gazing Queerly: The Art And Text Around Saruman’S Non-Normativity, Christopher Vaccaro

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

The queer is often defined by its relation to normativity. Michael Warner’s The Trouble with Normal situates queerness in opposition to normalcy, even gay normalcy. Karma Lochrie’s Heterosyncrasies: Female Sexuality When Normal Wasn’t deconstructs a monolithic hetero-normativity. Within the fantasy genre, protagonists frequently reside in a queer relation to normative communities. J. R. R. Tolkien quite often depicts his major characters within his mythopoeic framework as in some way outside of the normal; they’re often odd, fringe outsiders in relation to the larger community to which they are a part. The texts of his legendarium present this queerness fairly clearly—so …

Our Flag (And Spaceship) Means Queer: Monstering The Majority Culture, Sara Brown, Kristine Larsen

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Although the television series Our Flag Means Death presents on the surface as a romantic comedy, it is enhanced by mythic elements that infuse the narrative with a clear sense of the fantastic. Here, the pirates exist in a Secondary World that openly draws upon the Primary (both in terms of historiography and legend); hence 18th-century piracy and British colonialism can interact seamlessly with human-to-animal-transformations (paying homage to the Greek myth of Ceyx and Alcyone) without seeming either disconcerting or anomalous – all co-exist comfortably in Faerie. OFMD both inverts and deconstructs mythopoeia; the Primary World myths of the Gentleman …

Tolkien’S Queer Landscape: Three Papers On Middle-Earth’S Heterotopias, Will Sherwood, Marita Arvaniti, Mariana Rios Maldonado

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

The following papers will explore Tolkien’s queer landscapes of Middle-earth: from Arda’s highest peaks and hidden underbellies, to her liminal, fae places, using the lens of Michel Foucault’s heterotopias.

Marita Arvaniti will introduce the panel and discuss Tolkien’s Faerian Drama and its relationship to the much-maligned Tom Bombadil episode, focusing on the queer figure of Tom Bombadil himself and his heterotopic domain.

Mariana Rios Maldonado will analyse the Barrow-downs, Dead Marshes, and Paths of the Dead as symbolic sites of death created during harrowing moments in the history of Middle-earth. These are no-places: spaces of Otherness containing the evil and …

Welcome And Announcements, The Mythopoeic Society

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Join us for a screening of the Welcome and Announcements video in the 'Track 1' room, and have a cup of coffee before we get started!