Taking Craft Seriously: Tolkien (and You!) as Maker
Signum University invites you to join us on Saturday, 29 August in Portland, OR, USA, for Cascade Moot. For our return to Portland, we also return to our previous Portland location, the Portland English Language Academy (PELA). Our theme this year revolves around a Portland tradition: crafting. Come to Cascade Moot and enjoy Taking Craft Seriously: Tolkien (and You!) as Maker.
Register Here for Cascade Moot!
Price: $50.00 USD (~ $68.00 CAD) for in-person attendance, $25.00 USD (~ $34.00 CAD) for remote attendance
J.R.R. Tolkien took craft seriously. As a writer, he labored over prose style and narrative structure with philological precision. As a world-builder, he filled Middle-earth with makers: smiths forging Silmarils and blades, gardeners tending the Shire, weavers creating tapestries that held the history of nations. And as a person, he was himself a maker. He was a painter of illustrations, a creator of maps, a world-class inventor of languages, and a creator of elaborate jokes and poems he shared with his friends.
Cascade Moot invites you to come and share your crafts with the community in whatever form they take. We welcome traditional academic papers on:
The Writer’s Craft: Tolkien’s prose techniques, narrative architecture, and theories of subcreation.
The Ethical Craft: The moral weight of making in Middle-earth; what distinguishes Aulë from Saruman, for example?
The Worldbuilder’s Craft: Language invention, mapmaking, and the construction of legendary histories.
The Literature’s Craft: The symbolic and narrative roles of objects made by hand, from lembas to the Argonath to the Silmarils.
Additionally, we encourage proposals for creative or hands-on sessions that engage with the practices of making. Do you paint? Create with Legos? Make music? Does your crafting involve the written word with poetry or story? Do you use 3-D printers to create? Or something else entirely? If you have an idea for a workshop, demonstration, interactive presentation, or just want to show to a welcoming community your contribution that connects to craft in your own creative life, in Tolkien’s legendarium, or in any other fictional universe you enjoy and want to share, we would be honored to have you share it with us.
Submit Your Presentation Proposal Here!
Please note that a conference theme helps tie the day together and optimize fun, and we welcome anyone to respond to the Call for Proposals. Our moots are supportive environments for practicing or developing your presentation skills regardless of your experience.
This Call for Proposals will close after 29 July. We will finalize the schedule then and post it here.
Following the Moot, there will be an informal, unofficial dinner at a local restaurant with Corey Olsen and the Cascade Moot team. This is not included in the registration fee and will be at your own additional cost.
Please read our Regional Moot Recording and Privacy Notice. You will be required to agree to its contents in our registration system before completing your ticket purchase.
