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Showing posts from 2017

PRODUCTIVITY REPORT: 2017 Calendar Year

So, I already do this productivity reports in August (i.e., the anniversary of me getting an academic blog), which may be found both here and here , but I decided that a "Calendar Year Productivity Report" would not only be fun but fun -- you know, give myself a sense of achievement that occurs twice as frequently as Christmas, despite the overlap in materials. Of course, I'll only include things written within this calendar year, although some of it has been fortunate enough to be published rather quickly. So, without further ado, here's the report: Everything from January-July 2017 "Unraveling The Hobbit's Strange Publication History: A Look at Possible Worlds, Modality, and Accessibility Relations " -- now published in Fastitocalon , 6000 words "J.R.R. Tolkien and 1954 Nomination of E.M. Forster for the Nobel Prize" -- now published by Mythlore , 9000 words Book review of Edmund Gordon's The Invention of Angela Carter , now p

Books that Didn't Age Well: L. Frank Baum's Life & Adventures of Santa Claus

The title says it all. I've been reading a lot of Baum books lately in prep for my short article, and I was recommended The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1902) as a good introduction to many of Baum's fairy creatures. Well, the book's a bit dull and much too cloyingly sweet, but just imagine my horror when I discovered that Baum, with his customary flair for whimsy, decided to just up and insert genocide, racism, and a rationalization  for environmental destruction! GENOCIDE Yep, straight up genocide -- although, of course, it isn't called that. Claus gets kidnapped by a race of evil creatures called Angwas. He escapes, but Claus's friend Ak, the Master Huntsman, visits the Angwas and tells them to stop. His reasoning? "We immortals, no less than mortals like Claus, are superior to you. Do as I say!" The king of the Angwas, naturally enough, refuses, so all the immortals decide to wipe out this race of "evil" creatures from the face of

Stephen R. Donaldson and Tolkien

Well, just finished my monster 12,000 article (14k with footnotes) on sexed/gender violence in Stephen R. Donaldson. Sent it off yesterday afternoon. I have high hopes for it, but it was exhausting to write -- not only 2 1/2 months of labor, but a very depressing subject matter. My final draft has the phrases "sexed violence," "rape," and "assault" appear 168 times, and my secondary reading wasn't no picnic either, as you might imagine. But anyway, I started reading the 3rd book of The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant , and I got to think thinking about SRD and Tolkien himself. Perhaps I should preface this by saying -- and it kills me to do so, since I love SRD -- that The Last Chronicles are really, really, really bad. The first two books are perhaps mediocre; not awful, mind you, but not as fresh or captivating as either of the first two Covenant trilogies. Yet book 3, Against All Things Ending , is really a sucker punch to the soul. I tried rea

Free laptop? Much love to you, U of A!

So, yes -- the University of Arizona just gave all its lecturers free laptops. This is part, I've been told, of their general effort to update the tech for all faculty, and it just so happens that lecturers are being considered faculty for the first time. Anyway, although this move has apparently been in the works for months, we just got the announcement a few days ago. Just picked mine up, in fact. I've said it before, but it's worth saying again -- I absolutely lucked out in getting hired by such an awesome place. I mean, really . . . a free laptop .  And the exceptionally cool part is that I'd just been about to buy a new one; my current lappy is over four years old and running down.

Latest Tolkien Publication: Fastitocalon

Just received my contributor's copy of Fastitocalon , which is a European journal dedicated to "studies in fantasticism ancient to modern." The special issue is all about world-building & subcreation, and it allowed me to apply to possible worlds theory (as a branch of narrative theory) to the different editions of The Hobbit . Basically, without delving into any gory details, I think the 1st edition of The Hobbit creates a distinct fictional world which requires study in its own right -- and this world is modally differentiated world from the fictional worlds created by the Revision Phrase (2nd edition text, 1951-1954) and the Assimilation Phase (post- Fellowship of the Ring ). Fun stuff . . . and I actually talked about submitting the original abstract on this blog little over a year ago, here . Intriguingly, 5 of the 11 contributors were graduate students (two of the articles had dual authors). That number rises to 6 if you count myself, since I'd written

The U of A Writing Program Wins a Major National Award

Well, hot dog! A few days ago, I learned that our Writing Program has been awarded the  2017-18 CCCC Writing Program Certificate of Excellence . (The 4 Cs are the major U.S. rhet/comp organization, akin to MLA for literature people.) Since I'm such a recent addition to the university, this award leaves me feeling somewhat bemused -- especially since many lecturers, TT faculty, and administrators have been advocating hard for years to improve this program. Still, this is major, and I'm excited. Please let me gush for a moment. Arizona's massive efforts to improve the working conditions and lives of its lecturers was a major deciding factor in the award, according to the notification we received. Really, I've been awed at the many initiatives our Writing Program has undertaken: A major salary hike a few years ago, Ongoing efforts for shared governance in the English Department (i.e., lecturers voting on departmental issues), a promotion plan, and three-year contract

White Male Bashing as Criticism -- the LARB review of Bladerunner 2049

So, I just finished reading the  Los Angeles Review of Books  review  of  Bladerunner 2049 . For the record, I loved the film. The themes were intellectually engaging, the score impressive, and it handled its characters with intelligence and respect. All in all, I consider it an exemplary sequel. The writer of the  LARB  review, alas, does not. I should clarify that when I call this a "poor" review, I do not mean in the technical sense. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun clearly has a great grasp of film technique, and her actual writing is lucid and engaging. Instead, what I mean is the refusal to see the film on its own terms -- preferring, rather, to see in one's own ideological/political lens, and then drenching the film in invective. The discussion of  BR2049  on the  IAFA  listserv   actually made many of Chun's main points last month, but she assembled them into a single article, so I'll tackle the review here. Her basic idea is to look for  why  the film has faile

Lloyd Alexander -- the Translator of Jean-Paul Sartre?

As part of my Stephen R. Donaldson, I've been reading some Jean-Paul Sartre -- mostly Being and Nothingness and his novel, Nausea. I'm pretty familiar with Sartre in broad outlines, of course. My first semester in college, I went through a pretty big existentialist phase thanks to my Introduction to Philosophy course, which had a "Existentialism is a Humanism" as one of the optional readings in the back. What self-absorbed, rebellious 18-year-old atheist  wouldn't be captivated by a philosophy marked by "anguish, despair, and forlornness?" I eventually got over that phase, partly because it seemed pretentious and partly because I couldn't (then) understand any of the harder philosophical works, but I still loved Donaldson (whose link to existential thought I hadn't then quite realized).  Anyway, reading Nausea for the first time, and I noticed that it was translated by a "Lloyd Alexander."  "Huh!" I thought. So I checked

Reviews Editor for Fafnir. (Also, the Baum Bugle!)

Well, a minor happy piece of personal news this Thanksgiving -- looks like I'll be the new Reviews Editor for Fafnir: A Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research . I actually applied for the open editor in chief position, which I also applied to last year , but I came in a narrow second.  Still, luck was with me. The editorial board had already decided to expand their reviews section (monographs and dissertations both), and they decided to offer me the position before placing any open calls. Well, I love books reviews, so this is really quite good. Plus it won't be as time intensive as the full editor in chief position, so this will provide more time for personal research. It's a win-win situation here. I'm looking forward to starting. Fafnir publishes four times a year, so the current issue is now being laid out. I'll be starting officially in January 2018. In other news, my friend Sarah H. is also about to assume the editor in chief position for

Mythlore 130 Received

Just got my order of Mythlore #130 (vol. 35, issue 2) in the mail last night. I've particularly proud of this one (the biggest single issue in the journal's history), as it contains both an article and a review of mine. The article, which I summarize here , is about why Tolkien might have co-nominated E.M. Forster for the Nobel Prize in 1954. The review is of a great biography about Angela Carter, the British fairy tale writer and postmodern feminist.  Incidentally, this may be the first physical issue of Mythlore I've ever handled. All my prior experience with the journal has been through either an online database or through a pdf of an interlibrary loan. Nice looking volume, in all. 

Christopher Tolkien, semi-retired!

So, the big news last night is that Christopher Tolkien has resigned (retired, I suppose would be a better word) as the director the Tolkien Estate . He'll remain the literary executor, but still, this is pretty big news. This announcement also comes on the heels of the big news from a few days ago that Amazon just acquired the global t.v. rights for a prequel series to The Lord of the Rings, and it's hard to imagine that the two pieces of information are unrelated. Anyway, though, as can be gleaned from the comments section in the above link, Christopher Tolkien's centrality to Tolkien Studies is about as high as you can possibly get, and his influence on the field as great as any scholar, just about, could make to their field. I certainly don't know any comps, especially as C. Tolkien started his work decades before Tolkien scholarship became as prolific as it has been. I wonder sometimes if the fact that he's the son of Tolkien Sr. has partially obscured his sc

Chomsky!!!!

Well, actually, last Thursday night with Chomsky. In celebration of luring Noam Chomsky away from MIT, the U of A had a "discussion" with him at Centennial Hall. Tickets were $15 -- and I don't know if I was outraged they were charging for an academic event, or disappointed that someone at the very pinnacle of academia didn't bring in triple-digit ticket prices! (Regardless, the ticketing website was the most convoluted thing imaginable. Despite that, a pretty nice crowd showed.) Anyway, the discussion itself wasn't much -- just some normal observations about current politics, media, human rights, nuclear war, and the like. Nothing particularly insightful or amazing. Still, the wife and I went for the pleasure of seeing a genius, not any practical or academic benefit, so we were happy. Plus the discussion and following Q&A went about 2 hours long, so we certainly got our money's worth. Afterwards, we went to Chipotle's. Apparently, one of my stud

First Annual Conference on Gender-Based Conference (U of A)

Spurred on by that encyclopedia article I wrote about Stephen R. Donaldson and aliens, these last two months I've been hammering away on an article about the relationship between his work and gender violence. With the article entering the final stages, the following opportunity was just too good to miss: the  First Annual Conference on Gender-Based Conference , November 3rd & 4th, hosted here at the U of A. I didn't go last evening since it started at 6:30 pm, and that's perilously close to my bed time (although I hated to miss the keynote address by Brooke Axtell ), but I'm making the Saturday sessions. So far, it's a pretty good conference. It's a bit less academic than I was hoping for, being a bit more practical about how to solve issues of gender-based violence, but I'm learning some valuable things about terminology and the kinds of discussions current in the issue. Even though my interests in the topic are a bit narrower than most people's w

Taking one for the team . . .

So, I've had an absolutely beautiful schedule this semester: four classes, all back-to-back on MWF, with only one prep and plenty of time to work in the mornings. Well, a kink's just been thrown into those gears. Apparently, one of the lecturers here suddenly resigned yesterday, and I responded to the frantic emails of the WP director calling for help. I figured, why not, what with my (relatively) open schedule. Plus, it's just good to help out the department during a pickle.*** So I'm going over the previous instructor's course documents and D2L, trying to get a feel for what he was doing after 10 weeks. Plus, no idea if he had given his students any more indication about his leaving than he did the university. This'll be weird . . . but, also, strangely less pressure than my normal classes. I'll meet the students tomorrow. We'll see how it goes! ***Incidentally, our WP director told me how she'd been bragging just the other day, "Oh, Oct

White Supremacist Rally in Murfreesboro

Life conspires to make my existence dull, apparently. The solar eclipse hit Tennessee just a month after I left for Tucson; Arizona barely saw anything dramatic, whereas the world went completely dark in the Murf. Then, after narrowing missing out on that job in Houston, Hurricane Harvey struck  the area, causing massive flooding and evacuation. Now, yesterday witnessed a huge white supremacist rally in Shelbysville and Murfreesboro, TN. Worried that another Charlottesville might happen, businesses closed, people were warned away, and the university canceled several scheduled weekend events. Interesting tidbit: the rally organizers picked the area because they thought it significantly less likely to spur counter-protests than in Charlottesville, a relatively liberal bastion . . . which implies that Tennessee is particularly racist-friendly. Nonetheless, there was a enough push back that the organizers canceled the Murfreesboro rally at the last minute.  Mad respect to everyone w

An wretchedly awful and completely bad psychoanalytic Kristevan interpretation

Currently, I've begun reading a psychoanalytic interpretation of Stephen R. Donaldson (cuz that's how I roll, baby). Although quite well-written, especially engaging with Julia Kristeva's theory, the incompetent literary analysis finally irritated me so much that, after a particularly egregious misreading, I wrote in the margins, "Jesus, no, this is just stupid!" Since this was a library book, no less, I now have the difficult moral decision of whether to erase that remark when I return the book. On one hand, marginalia is technically vandalism. On the other, I feel a responsibility to warn all those fresh-eyed eager young undergrads, bedazzled by the complexities of Theory, who might be tempted to consider anything this particular book said seriously. Anyway, in other news. After getting bored with writing a feminist analysis of Tolkien, I decided to write a feminist analysis of Donaldson (spurred by the enthusiasm I felt in writing the encyclopedia article abo

Sejong wuvs me?

Open up my mailbox yesterday, and what do I see but a letter from the Sejong Cultural Society informing me about the "2018 Sejong Writing Competition." Needless to say, I haven't the foggiest notion how they found me or why they contacted me -- I recently did a movie review on South Korean film director Bong Joon-ho, but that's it (and that hasn't even been published yet). Most ironic of all: the writing contest isn't even open to anyone over 25 years old!

I've been cited!!! (sorta kinda maybe well not really)

Although I've now a decent among of published articles for an early career academic, considering the glacial pace of academic publishing, it takes quite a while for anyone's ideas to disseminate widely enough to be cited by other scholars. My only essay out long enough for citation is my first, an article on Stephen R. Donaldson and the idea of genre. By a stroke a great good fortune, the director of my undergraduate senior thesis, Dr. Donald "Mack" Hassler, was compiling a volume of essays with Clyde Wilcox called New Boundaries in Political Science Fiction and, well, to make a long story short, he threw a young protege a bone, and gave me my first publication. Anyway, you can imagine my excitement when I recently saw that someone had cited me. Actually, tbh, I've been cited once before to my knowledge -- way back in 2011 or so, a scholar named Patricia Kennon quoted from me in a contribution to  Irish Children's Literature and Culture: New Perspectives on

Evangeline Walton, papers!!!

So, some random coolness. Browsing through our U of A Special Collections, I realized that we have the papers for Evangeline Walton, a relatively well-known American fantasy writer, pre-Tolkien. She did a number of books based off Welsh legend and the Mabinogion trilogy. I bought a number of her books from a used bookstore last fall, intending to read her, but never quite got around to it. Anyway, apparently she spent the last part of her life in Tucson, so gave her papers to the university. If I ever get some time or the opportunity, I might try taking advantage of that collection for an article, perhaps.

Another weird Tolkien pop culture reference - the GANDALF trial

When I recently got the editorial comments back for my review of Okja (dir. Bong Joon-ho) for Science Fiction Film and Television, the only tweak they required was some clarification on the A.L.F. (Animal Liberation Front). My review, they said, made it sound as if Bong had simply created the group for the film, when in fact it is a very real, clandestine, leadership, world organization for animal rights. Yeah well, er, um. . . . I won't admit this to THEM, but I actually had no idea that it was real. Somehow, despite all my background research on the film, it never once occurred to me that Bong might be using a real organization to help his protagonist. (*embarassed*) Anyway, after some quick googling, I tweaked the review accordingly. During the course of this googling, however, I stumbled upon something called "the GANDALF trial" from the U.K. in 1997.  Now, no need to panic -- everyone's favorite wizard is by no means guilty of any high crimes or misdemeanors.

Oh, an encyclopedia article on aliens in Stephen R. Donaldson

So, Stephen R. Donaldson's one of my favorite writers, someone on whom I did my undergrad senior thesis. (I went to Kent State, where he got a MA, and they have a nifty SRD special collections.) Well, recently there was a volume asking for articles on the aliens in the work of various writers/tv shows/movies. The story of this volume is rather interesting. Mike Levy, a quite well-known sf and fantasy critic, tragically passed away recently, and his widow asked the fantasy scholar Farah Mendlesohn to take over this book he'd been contracted to write. (Together, Levy and Mendlesohn recently wrote a fantastic book on Children's fantasy literature; the cover itself should win an award.) Well, Dr. Mendlesohn wasn't that much familiar with aliens, according to her own admission, so she outsourced the writing of many of the essays and individual encyclopedia articles. I volunteered to write an article on aliens in SRD, and she just green lighted me. I'm excited about thi

There but for the Grace of the Job Market Go I

If life is inherently random, the academic life is randomness squared. With parts of Texas (including half of Houston) underwater because of Hurricane Harvey, and the same with Floria due to Hurricane Irma, it's hard to avoid thinking about the fact that half the academic jobs for which I applied last year were in either Texas or Florida. I actually had two job interviews in Texas, one in Tyler and another in Houston. Had fate brought me to Houston in particular, I'd be an evacuee right now. As it is, in the desert it's been weeks since I've seen rain. Best wishes to everyone weathering the storm(s).

Scientia et Humanita Issue 7 has been published!!!

Okay, okay, technically, the print version of the journal came out several months ago. Yet, due to various technical foibles, the online open access version has just been put up here. Okay, technically, the print version has been up for a few weeks, at least the full pdf version and the individual articles . . . but lacking the editor's introduction. Now, though, everything's fine and dandy. Issue 7 can be found here . I'm very excited about this issue. Not only was this my first tenure as editor in chief, overseeing all aspects of production, but we had a quite nice mix of authors this year -- see my editor's introduction here for more details. Included in this year's issue: "Corpus Christi, Superstar? Decoding the Enigma of the York Mystery Cycle" by  Hillary K. Yeager , grad, English "Self-Leadership Strategies and Performance Perspectives Within Student Aviation Teams" by  Christopher R. Bearden , undergrad, psychology "Doe

Heading to Kalamazoo!

Looks like my abstract has just been accepted for the 53rd International Congress in Medieval Studies, held in Kalamazoo, MI. Even though I'm not a medievalist, I'm super excited about this. This conference always has a large number of Tolkien panels, and I have the great good fortune to share panel honors with not one but two Tolkien scholars with whose work I'm familiar. First is Jane Chance, certainly in the top 5 of All-Time Tolkien scholars, and the person who's largely responsible, so I gather, for the large Tolkien presence in this conference over the years. The other is Andrew Higgins, who co-edited the scholarly edition of A Secret Vice with Dimitra Fimi -- a book that I reviewed for JFA not too long ago. My review was strongly positive, of course (they did a good job), but the expectation of meeting a person whose work I reviewed is somewhat nerve-wracking! Anyway, this conference is still a good long ways away -- May 10th-13th, 2018. That'll just be aft

British Fantasy Novelist Joe Abercrombie . . . sigh.

So, a whiles back during the writing of an article on Glen Cook (a personal favorite), I realized that I just didn't know much about fantasy lit written post-1980s and -1990s. Which makes sense -- that's around when my reading habits greatly diversified. Still, it was hard to make a case for Cook's uniqueness when I hadn't read several of the most recent writers he's been compared to, so I recently made a foray into Joe Abercrombie, known for writing a "grimdark" type of military fantasy. Anyway, reading Mr. Abercrombie has caused me a severe case of eye rolling. I've read Before They are Hanged (2007), the second novel in his First Law trilogy, and half of The Heroes (2011), a stand-alone novel set in the same universe. That was enough for me to get a sense of his style and literary character. My thoughts: BASIC ETHOS OF HIS WORLD : Sometimes, a writer simply tries too hard to be sardonic, cynical, and world-wise, and that's the impression

A Look at Frederick Pohl

Frederick Pohl's one of those names in science fiction who's frequently referenced (he's a grandmaster, after all) but whom I know virtually nothing about. Recently, I gave him a try after reading his Huge-winning short story "Day Million," the awesomeness of which motivated me to try some of his other work. First I tried The Space Merchants, one of sf classics that Pohl co-wrote with C.M. Kornbluth. It's clearly a riff on the rising of post-WWII American advertising and consumerism, and of course I kept making unfair comparisons to  Mad Men . Even without that complications, however, I can't say that the novel itself impressed me too much. It had a nice premise (i.e, in a world dominated by advertisers, one company is tasked with getting colonists up to the inhospitible planet Mars), but it had that slapdash quality that marks so much early sf. The writing in the second half in particular had that hurry-up-and-let's-get-this novel-over-with quality

Orientation Complete -- Classes Tomorrow!!

Well, the first day of classes is tomorrow. Am I nervous? Not about the teaching, at least. Although it's been about a year and a half since I've been in the classroom, once you've done it enough, stage fright is no longer really a factor. Plus, I've done plenty of conferences and presentations (and dissertation defenses!) in the meantime.  I'm actually more nervous that I've minded all the relevant Ps and Qs in my syllabus; the modern syllabus is akin to rocket science, and I keep frantically double-checking things to make sure all the required tidbits are there. But I'm already half in love with my new program -- and, needless to say, we've just met. I hinted at this before, but the UA Writing Program is really doing some wonderful things. Many of the pedagogical practices they've incorporated, as might be expected, reflect some of the best current theories and practices of rhet/comp theorists. On a more nuts & bolts level, our college'

First Day of Orientation at the U of A!!!

Actually, this was an optional meeting, but I wanted to acclimatize myself to the university as quickly as possible. The department textbooks advocates a genre-based, rather than a process-based, approach to writing, so that's a bit out of my comfort zone & I needed as much info as possible before composing my syllabus.  Anyway, a few observations: 95% of the people there were GTAs -- only 5 new lecturers. Should have expected that, I suppose, but I didn't. Speaking of the GTAs, they're quite the young pups. Given that my doctoral program had a slight higher average age for incoming grad students, I'd forgotten what 23 / 24 year old grad students looked like! People are really friendly. I'm really going to enjoy here, I think. (But I already knew that!) Much of the pedagogical and rhetorical information on which this writing program is based is familiar to me from MTSU's teacher training. So, while they're'll be a learning curve, it's goi

Tolkien and the 1954 Nomination of E. M. Forster for the Nobel Prize

Now that I've received the official word, I'm pleased to announce the appearance in the fall of Mythlore  of my essay, "J.R.R. Tolkien and the 1954 Nomination of E. M. Forster for the Nobel Prize in Literature."  As you can probably tell from the title, my theme is that mysterious case of why Tolkien would have nominated Forster -- whom we never knew he admired -- for literature's highest prize. To my knowledge, only two scholars have even discussed that situation at any length, both bloggers: Jason Fisher here and John D. Rateliff here . Basically, I have two contentions. The first revolves around possible literary reasons for Tolkien's nomination. Verlyn Flieger has previously posited that Tolkien could have been influenced by Howards End , but I'm placing my money on A Passage to India . Although postcolonial issues did not occupy much attention in Tolkien's own writings, he certainly knew about such things himself (having been born in S. Africa

A Memorial Post for a Valiant Backpack!

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Backpacks and shoes live a hard life when they hook up with me. I'm murder on them, walking on average 30 miles a week and always carrying 20-40 pounds of stuff. Alas, it's time to retire my current faithful backpack with a commemorative post. He was originally a Christmas present from Martina seven years ago. Despite a lifetime guarantee, he's pretty beat up and close to falling apart, and it's time to find a new stuff-holding companion as I embark on my journey to Arizona. He's been quite a few places with me, including London & Barcelona & Paris & Prague, as well as all throughout my doctoral program, and he's held my stuff pretty much everyday since I got him. Old backpack, I salute you!!

Mary Shelley & The Last Man

The 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is coming up. In preparation for an article I'm hoping to write, I've been reading up on her. My main target thus far is her other science fiction novel, the apocalyptic  The Last Man (1828). It's . . . . well, it's not that good. Part I describes the narrator's friends, clearly based on Percy Shelley and Lord Byron, plus all their tedious love affairs and marriages. That's to be expected from a novel from that period, I suppose. Part II describes some politics stuff, plus the beginnings of a vast plague. Part III is where the plague finally wipes everyone out. Where the novel does well is: Nice portraits of Shelley and Byron. Unfortunately, that doesn't help The Last Man succeed as a novel. The trepidation of the plague as it begins to sweep over the world. Powerful sense of doom, only slightly ruined by the excessive verbiage in which Shelley likes to say things. On a relate

Middle Tennessee State U. -- An Appreciation

With my big move to the U of A in Tucson just over a week away, the MTSU nostalgia's starting to hit me pretty hard. It's odd -- I don't get particularly attached to places, and I don't have much "school spirit" for any of the institutions I've attended, at least with the exception of Lycoming College, where I spent three semesters immediately after high school. Still, I've been reminiscing how fortunate I've been in the opportunities given me by MTSU's doctoral program, and how little confidence I had in that program when I first arrived. When I was applying to graduate programs in late 2011, I found MTSU entirely by accident -- unsure of where to go for a program that emphasized fantasy and science fiction, I browsed  The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts looking for professors, and I found one that taught at MTSU, which I had never heard of before. Looking through their faculty page, I saw several professors had similar interests to me,

Tolkien Journals Do It Better

The peer review process is infamously slow. Everyone knows the familiar slog: you poor blood, sweat, and tears into writing an article, send it off to a journal, and 4-6 months later (sometimes more!) you hear a response. In theory, there's no reason the process needs to take so long -- it's only a couple hours of work for the reviewer, maybe more if the submission's worth the effort. But peer review is a thing where very busy academics are doing volunteer labor that, in the grand scheme of things, does very little to advance their careers. Reviewing articles is a service to the field, but it's ridiculously easy to put one off when you're teaching, grading, writing, researching, serving on committees, attending conferences, and all the other hosts of things you must do as an academic. Hence, you can only imagine how impressed I am with the speed with which I've gotten peer reviews from the various Tolkien journals. Thus far, I've offered submissions to Tol

My Productivity Record for Aug. 2016 to Aug. 2017

It sure would make sense to do these productivity reports for a calendar year, but the August-August timeline -- basically the academic year -- works just fine too, I suppose. In my previous yearly productivity report , I managed 63,000 words of writing, most of it publishable, and I expressed hopes that my upcoming year on a Writing Fellowship would see that output rise. I didn't quite make that, primarily because of job applications and the massive revisions my dissertation underwent during February and March, which meant that I couldn't accomplish any new work. But even if I wasn't quite convinced about the necessity of those revisions, at least the beast is done, and life's going good. So, the output: Essay on narrative theory and world construction in The Hobbit (under review) -- 6,000 words Essay on J.R.R. Tolkien and why he nominated E.M. Forster for the 1954 Nobel Prize (forthcoming) -- 9,000 words Essay on Glen Cook's Instrumentalities of the Night s