School of Critical Studies

If you would like to hear from the Centre via e-mail with news about upcoming events and other activities or opportunities please fill in this form - Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic mailing list

Perspectives on Fantasy: Authors' Roundtable - 1 May 2024

• Imagining the Celtic Past in Modern Fantasy, edited by Dimitra Fimi and Alistair Sims
• William Hope Hodgson and the Rise of the Weird, by Timothy S. Murphy
• Mapping Middle-earth, by Anahit Behrooz
• Reading Tolkien in Chinese, by Eric Reinders

• To book your free ticket click here

15-17 May 2024: GIFCon 2024: Conjuring Creatures and Worlds (online)

• The full GIFCon 2024 programme can be found here
• We're delighted to host a trio of amazing keynote speakers: Professor Emily Selove, C. J. Cooke, and Zen Cho - more about our keynotes here
• Register to attend GIFCon for free here

Philophantast: A Speculative Fiction and Philosophy Conference

The Call for Papers for the 59th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA (May 9-11, 2024) is now open. Proposals of papers and contributions to roundtables are due Sept. 15, 2022. The Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic, University of Glasgow, is sponsoring the following session: 

Here Be Dragons: Tolkien at the Medieval Margins

Modality: Virtual

Boundaries, margins and marginality are expanding areas of research in contemporary fantasy studies, in which Tolkien’s work is still central. Tolkien’s medievalist fantasy is particularly ripe for a reconsideration from the perspective of the edges rather than the centre: from negotiating the borders of fantastical geographies, to contested borders of genre within the legendarium, to acknowledging the perspective of racially, culturally, and ethnically marginalised readers, fans, and scholars. This session will continue the conversation which started at GIFCon 2023, the annual international conference of the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic, which focused on boundaries and margins in fantasy.

Tolkien’s medievalist fantasy shows a keen interest in boundaries and margins: from negotiating fantastical geographies and their borders, to examining liminal characters in-between political/racial/cultural boundaries, even challenging borders of traditional genres within the legendarium (fairy-tale, romance, epic, science fantasy, etc.). At the same time, contemporary fantasy and Tolkien scholarship is at last opening up towards the experiences and perspectives of racially, culturally, and ethnically marginalised readers, fans, and scholars.

We invite paper proposals that seek to examine boundaries and margins in Tolkien’s legendarium, be they textual, linguistic, geographical, embodied, or imposed. 

All proposals must be made through the Congress’s Confex system. Please carefully follow the instructions on the Congress’s Call for Papers.

Deadline: Friday 15 September 2023

Tolkien sessions at IMC Leeds 2024

Paper abstracts are currently being sought for the following Tolkien sessions for the International Medieval Congress at Leeds, 1-4 July 2024.  The special thematic strand of this conference will be ‘Crisis’.  See more here.

We are very pleased that the 2024 IMC Tolkien Sessions will again be sponsored by the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic at the University of Glasgow.

Paper submissions are being sought for the following sessions:  

Tolkien’s Medieval Sub-creation in Crisis 

This session will examine different concepts of crisis in Tolkien studies. Papers may explore the types of crises Tolkien himself created in the body of his legendarium by his revising of several keys stories and legends at different times in his lifelong work.  Papers can address the significance of these narratives and their revisions in Tolkien’s shifting ideas about the world and cultures he was inventing. Papers may also explore adaptations of Tolkien works and how they create crises in our evolving understanding of the canon of Tolkien’s work and its reception.  

Bodily Crises in Tolkien’s Medievalism 

Papers in this session can explore crises/concerns of gender and bodily difference in Tolkien’s works including sexuality and disability.  Indicative areas to be examined include the role of bodies under physical duress, punishment, injury from battle or war, as well as bodies in transformation including prosthetics, spiritual transformation (good or evil) and how bodies and body transformation from Tolkien’s works are depicted in illustrations and in films and other media.  

Racial Medievalism in Tolkien Studies – A Session Celebrating the Works of Professor Dimitra Fimi, founder of Tolkien at Leeds

Papers in this session may respond to, critique and develop key ideas regarding Tolkien’s representations of race that were first explored in Professor Dimitra Fimi’s ground-breaking 2008 book Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits, which won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies in 2010. Fimi’s evolving body of work has brought to light neglected aspects of Tolkien’s creativity and world-building, including the centrality of the Elves, the role of linguistic invention, and the relationships between race and material culture in Middle-earth This session invites papers that explore Tolkien’s contexts, racial representations and world-building through engaging with and building upon the approaches Professor Fimi has set out in her academic work.

Tolkien: Medieval Roots and Modern Branches

This continuing Tolkien at Leeds session will accommodate wider topics and new approaches to Tolkien’s medievalism, ranging from source studies and theoretical readings to comparative studies of Tolkien’s works and Middle-earth studies.  

Crises in Researching Tolkien: A Round Table 

The Annual Tolkien at Leeds roundtable will explore the current crises facing Tolkien teachers, academics and researchers in Tolkien and Middle-earth studies.  Topics can include the various adaptions of Tolkien’s works that will continue to grow with new media deals, differing thoughts on treatment of Tolkien’s race, culture and sexuality in his works and the desire of scholars to see, analyse and contextualise more of Tolkien’s remaining unpublished papers.

• Please submit a paper contribution title and abstract by 31 August 2023 to  Dr. Andrew Higgins (asthiggins@me.com) 
• Length of abstracts: 150 words (max!)  
• Papers will be 15-20 minutes long (3 paper sessions will be preferred) 
• With your abstract, please include name and details of contributor (affiliation, address, and preferred e-mail address)