Digital Commons Network^™

Vol. 21, No. 2 - Whole No. 45, David Bratman

Mythprint

Mythprint is the monthly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion, and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local and written discussion groups.

Vol. 18, No. 6 - Whole No. 13, David Bratman

Mythprint

Mythprint is the monthly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion, and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local and written discussion groups.

Vol. 18, No. 2 - Whole No. 9, David Bratman

Mythprint

Mythprint is the monthly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion, and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local and written discussion groups.

(Dis)Invested Bodies: The Neoliberal Crafting Of Disability, T. Wesley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Using the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) as a unifying text, my dissertation explores the relationship between cultural production and the neoliberal crafting of humanity, the term I use to describe how social dimensions—including the construction of the textual and material body—become reorganized and governed through market relations. While many disability scholars and activists frame the ADA’s failures through social misunderstandings of disability, few have seriously attended to the limits of the ADA as a neoliberal fusing of economic governance and classical liberal individualism.

Tracing convergences between the ADA and earlier US disability legislation to socioeconomic and political reforms enacted …

Do Androids Dream Of Bad Tv?: Un/Originality In Neil Burger’S Voyagers, Tom Ue, Callum M. Mcnutt

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Critics did not take kindly to Neil Burger’s Voyager (2021). On Rotten Tomatoes, the film scored a dismal 25%, and the consensus is that it’s a trip best not taken: “It has a game cast and a premise ripe with potential, but Voyagers drifts in familiar orbit rather than fully exploring its intriguing themes.” This article seeks neither to reclaim the film as an unjustly neglected cinematic masterpiece nor to assert its importance in the canon of dystopian works. Rather, it treats Voyagers as a test case for exploring our own critical investment in the genre. Our aims are …

Medieval To Modern: Morgan Le Fay As Folk Icon Of Women In Power In Modern King Arthur Stories, Colleen Victoria Etman

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation interrogates the ways that society views women with/in power through Arthurian adaptation. The body of work that makes up the Arthurian story is a sort of folk legend, a myth being told and retold by various authors in their own way. By using folk studies to analyze both medieval and modern texts, we can dissect what is important enough to remain over time. This signifies cultural values; things that have remained over time are reflective of the values of the writers producing these works, as well as the audiences consuming them. By interrogating these stories, we can make …

Placebos, Rhetoric, And The Power Of Expectation, Jennifer M. Reeher

Theses and Dissertations

Placebos, Rhetoric, and the Power of Expectation examines the relationship between persuasion and health to determine what interventions rhetoric could make in the interdisciplinary field of placebo studies. This exploration of the relationship between rhetoric and placebo responses relies on non-anthropocentric definitions and theories of rhetoric as well as a multifaceted archive that includes patient narratives, clinical intake forms, and peer-reviewed scientific studies of condition-specific placebo responses. The impact of this investigation spans the practical and the theoretical. First, rhetorical study highlights the importance of a patient’s perception of care in patient recovery. To this end, rhetoric offers audience-focused methods …

Recuperative Rhetorics: A Novel Framework For Rhetorical Analysis, Nicolas Palumbo

Masters Theses (Archived)

This thesis details the creation of the Recuperative Rhetorics analytical framework, which is a scalable, transdisciplinary framework for analyzing rhetorical texts, from individual speeches to societal understandings of legacy and history. It discusses the framework’s theoretical underpinnings, explains how to utilize it in analyzing rhetoric and rhetorical works, and provides examples of the framework in action across multiple mediums. The framework takes inspiration from the theories and praxes of Situationist International, primarily those of the spectacle, ready-made objects, détournement, and recuperation. The framework uses these ideas, and then builds upon more established analytical frameworks to establish a base from which …

“The Limit Does Not Exist”: Utopian And Feminist Pedagogies In 21st-Century Broadway Musicals, Stephen Reaugh

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes four Broadway musicals that are adaptations of popular films and novels: Legally Blonde, Fun Home, Waitress, and Mean Girls. These texts are performed in the 21st century and each stages either sexual assault or the fear of a sexual assault that is narrowly avoided. More narrowly, this dissertation focuses on the 2007-2018 time period in which these musicals were performed, thus leading up to and through Alyssa Milano's pivotal #metoo message on Twitter. The dissertation reads the review and marketing milieux in which these musicals existed, as well as each text in performance, to theorize how spectators …

Narrative Forms Of Violence: Fascism, Nazism, And The Holocaust In 20th-Century British Fiction, David Young

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Narrative Forms of Violence: Fascism, Nazism, and The Holocaust in 20^th-Century British Fiction examines how British authors explore fascist and Nazi violence through narrative. The texts in this project challenge the popular perception of Nazis and fascists and help to enrich the understanding of these character types in artistic representations of fascism and the Holocaust. I seek to reveal how each author in the three central texts examined presents fascist violence’s march toward the mainstream and the ways ordinary people deal with political violence. Each author critically depicts growing fascist regimes in World War II-era Europe and contemplates …

When The Tide Comes: A Critical Examination Of The Novel-Screenplay Hybrid With Example Chapters, Morgan F. Taylor Moore

Masters Theses

This thesis presents my research on the psychological realism genre, the stream of consciousness narrative technique, the usage of second person and the present tense, the biblical reasoning behind depicting the ordinary as extraordinary, the role of the demonic in domestic violence, the incorporation of screenplay styles, the scientific reasoning and personal findings of my project’s formatting, the examination of primary sources (novels) that have inspired my project, and finally, the research on ADHD, PTSD, and C-PTSD as the results of domestic abuse. Sample chapters of my project are included.

Constructing Death Worlds: Israel’S Occupation Of Palestine, Nichole S. Arel

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Achille Mbembe’s seminal work Necropolitics explains how the ultimate power of sovereignty is not exercised as Michel Foucault asserts in his theory of biopower in life over death, but rather in relegating certain populations to deathworlds, a place between the living and the dead. For over half of a century, Israel has illegally occupied both the West Bank and Gaza and exerted almost total control over the territories. It controls infrastructure such as roads, building permits, and water rights while also regulating the freedom of movement of Palestinians within and outside the West Bank's borders in addition to various other …

Membership Meeting And Closing Ceremonies, The Mythopoeic Society

Mythcon

While the Members’ Meeting portion of Mythcon will be of interest primarily to members of the Mythopoeic Society, all conference participants are welcome to attend. Led by the Mythopoeic Society Stewards, the meeting will announce and discuss timely and necessary Society topics. Following the meeting, we will host our traditional leave-taking closing ceremonies which feature singing songs dear to Mythcon regulars. Words and music at: https://mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-closing-songs.htm Members’ Meeting and Closing Ceremonies take place Monday morning, 11:15 am - 1 pm in the Terrace Rooms.

Narnia And The Norse: The Presence Of Medieval Icelandic Literature In C.S. Lewis’S Writings, Melody Green

Mythcon

In his autobiography Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis spends quite a bit of time discussing his deep, lifelong love of the stories that are often called “Norse Myth” (even though the majority of these stories were first written down in medieval Iceland. His diaries and letters reveal more about his love of this literature, including discussion of the Kolbitars, the weekly discussion group organized by J.R.R. Tolkien to read aloud the Icelandic sagas and eddas in their original language. In spite of this, little work has been done on Lewis’s own writings and the medieval Icelandic literature that he …

Before And After: Editing A Collection Through The Pandemic, Cami Agan

Mythcon

At Mythcon in San Diego (2019, the “before time”), the Stewards approved my proposal for the collection of essays entitled Cities and Strongholds of Middle-earth; Essays on the Habitations of Tolkien’s Legendarium from Mythopoeic Press. I will discuss the process of soliciting contributors, compiling, cajoling, editing, developing the introduction, proofing the volume, working with MythPress editors, as well as discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic affected/ affects the process of publication, and offer a general overview of the volume itself, which [Varda willing!] will be available for order at Mythcon53.

The Year In Star Trek, Scott Lohman, Joan Marie Verba

Mythcon

The panelists will talk about this year’s developments and will be open to discussion and questions.

The 500th Mythprint, Megan Abrahamson, David Bratman, Janet Brennan Croft, Eleanor M. Farrell

Mythcon

After over 50 years of the Mythopoeic Society and through its many changes, Mythprint’s 500th—that’s right, five hundred—issue will be coming out at the end of this year (61:4 #411). The current editor Megan Abrahamson will chair a panel of former Mythprint editors talking about the newsletter’s past and future. If you’re interested in learning about Mythsoc history, being a contributor to (or future editor of!) Mythprint, or if you have suggestions for the future of Mythprint, join us for conversation and questions.

From Page To Screen: Invented Language In George R.R. Martin’S And J.R.R. Tolkien’S Writings, And How They Are Used In Adaptations, Mareike Huber

Mythcon

In 2010, only a year before the adaptation of his fantasy novels would air, George R.R. Martin admitted that unlike J.R.R. Tolkien, whom he called a “linguist of rare talent” whose “astonishing feat of linguistic worldbuilding […] is never likely to be duplicated”, Martin himself only invents the words that he needs and does not “have a whole imaginary language” or languages “the way Tolkien did” (Martin 2010). In particular, when it comes to one of his ‘languages’, Dothraki, Martin said that he “did pepper the text with a few […] words” but generally relied on phrases like “[t]hey were …

Our Flag Means Romance…Middle English Romance, That Is, Megan Abrahamson

Mythcon

Our Flag Means Death, a pirate romantic comedy released on HBO Max, has been discussed in terms of its mythopoesis by Sara Brown at OMS #3 (“Our Flag…Means Queer: Monstering the Majority Culture”), and has been studied as referencing Shakespearean motifs by Melissa Rohrer (“Sometimes the old tropes are the best tropes: Shakespeare and Our Flag Means Death”). In this talk, I showcase the Middle English and mostly Arthurian Romance elements we find in OFMD, particularly its episodic quest format, focus on homosocial bonds, and engagement with courtly love. Other minor motifs—such as a hero’s humble beginnings and …

In Media Res: Sam & Frodo On The Journey, Craig Boyd

Mythcon

In one of the more pivotal passages in Lord of the Rings, Sam makes a couple of insightful comments to Frodo in a way that transcends his earlier foolishness. In a kind of moral and philosophical epiphany he says, “It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. . . But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with …

The Niggling Bandersnatch: Tolkien’S Revisionist Tendencies And The Canon Of Middle-Earth, Janet Brennan Croft, David Bratman, John Rosegrant

Mythcon

C.S. Lewis famously said of Tolkien in a 1959 letter that “you might as well try to influence a bandersnatch.” He continued by noting that Tolkien had “only two reactions to criticism: either he begins the whole work over again from the beginning or else takes no notice at all.” It’s pretty obvious he had a similar reaction to his own self-criticism – to noticing a loose end, or something that didn’t fit a changed cosmological theory, or a new addition to the legendarium that required a revision to the back-story. His reaction would be to niggle away at a …

Opening Ceremonies, The Mythopoeic Society

Mythcon

Mythcon participants are invited (but not required!) to take part in our opening festivities Saturday morning by wearing costumes or regalia and carrying banners in our procession to the Terrace Rooms in which our Opening Ceremonies and Scholar Guest of Honor Address will be held. Those wishing to take part in the Opening Procession should meet by 8:45 am inside the main hotel lobby.

The Year In Sf Tv, Scott Lohman

Mythcon

This is a group discussion, after some opening remarks, about the Science Fiction (broadly interpreted to include what the audience brings up) television/streaming of the past year or so.

Sealed In The Sacred Realm: Coming Of Age In The Liminal Spaces Of Hyrule, Alicia Fox-Lenz

Mythcon

The Legend of Zelda franchise commonly uses alternate dimensions or worlds in its storytelling. These dimensions are often tied to darkness — being a place where evil waits, gathering strength, or a sister-world that has fallen to evil and needs liberation — providing the hero, Link, with the primary conflict driving his adventure. Alongside these larger worlds that provide conflict, there exist smaller dimensions, liminal spaces where Link and a small cast of other heroic characters are brought for physical and spiritual maturation. We will discuss how these liminal spaces function as doors through which the player as Link crosses …

Fantastical Philosophies: Portrayals Of Good And Evil In Tolkien And Popular Film, Olivia Crane

Mythcon

As we enjoy fiction through written and filmed media, the storytellers portray an array of philosophical perspectives through their work. An inescapable portrayal in any creation is the reality of good and evil. Some writers portray good and evil as equal and opposite forces, harmonious when reached at a balance. Others leave behind this idea with the privation theory of evil. Fantasy, involving heroes and villains, magic and mischief, is a perfect media through which to present philosophy. What, then, do fantastical works have to say about good and evil? Do they agree across the ages or refute one another? …

The Importance Of Keeping Hobbies, Becca Adkins

Kentucky English Bulletin

No abstract provided.

Full Issue, Keb Editorial Board

Kentucky English Bulletin

No abstract provided.

Representation Progression In Children's Literature, Meili Caldwell

Kentucky English Bulletin

No abstract provided.

Grievability And The Contingency Of Life Value In Twenty-First-Century Science Fiction, Emily A. Reiff

English Language and Literature ETDs

Using Judith Butler’s framework of grievability, this dissertation explores twenty-first-century science fiction by British, Irish, and Caribbean authors whose novels grapple with legacies of colonialism and imperialism that relied on dehumanization and subjugation. Beginning with Sarah Maria Griffin’s Spare and Found Parts (2016), chapter one explores neocolonial rationales—purportedly based on health—which recreate colonial divisions of class and labor and enforce systems of diminishing grievability in a post-apocalyptic Irish context. Chapter two contends that Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021) illustrates the danger inherent to value systems that center “normative” embodiment in worlds that reconfigure hypercapacitated human beings as the …

Vol. 8 No. 1, Glen Goodknight

Mythprint

Mythprint is the monthly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion, and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local and written discussion groups.