Mythmoot Home | Mythmoot VIII Schedule
Abstracts for Saturday, June 26, 2021
Academic Presentations (9:00 am – 10:30 am)
Hyperjump To: Earthsea – Enterprise – Lyonesse
Earthsea
Slack Channel: #chat-1-earthsea
The Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien: Mythic Intersections, Fantastic Topography, and Wondrous Landscapes
Scott Hodgman, Adam Tyler, Emily Austin, Lynn Schlesinger, Joe Nagar, N. Trevor Brierly
Signum University graduate students discuss John Garth’s most recent book, The Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien: The Places that Inspired Middle-earth, and take questions on its resonance with places both real and imagined. In his latest book, Garth suggests that the world we walk in resonates with Middle-earth; just as Middle-earth feels solid beneath our feet. Garth builds his argument through eleven chapters ranging from the biographical and topographical, to the human activity that leaves lasting imprints on our world. Closely connected to Garth’s two chapters on Ancient Imprints, and Watch and Ward, “Rekindling an Old Light: Telling the Stories” by Adam Tyler highlights the centrality of memory and remembrance in the places that inspired Middle-earth. Encouraged by the biographical elements found in Garth’s chapter, The Land of Lúthien, Emily Austin’s “Tolkien, the Pre-Raphaelites, and the Oxford Union Library” delves into contexts that inspire, and may have inspired Tolkien. Shifting to the topographical chapters, “Sea Shores, Sea Journeys” by Lynn Schlesinger ponders Garth’s chapter on The Shore and the Sea, as well as the powerful sway the ocean has on the imagination. The next topographical presentation, “The Borgarviki and The Wanderings of Hurin” by Joe Nagar examines a specific theme found in Garth’s chapter, Roots of the Mountains. Turning from the topographical to the mythical, Trevor Brierly traces the “Waymarks through Faërie” as a thread woven throughout Tolkien’s inspiration. The Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien looked at the places that inspired Middle-earth through three interwoven themes: (i) the intersection of myth, fairy-story, and culture; (ii) topographical themes; (iii) places shaped and altered by human activity. The presentations in this panel follow the same structure; they present a picture of worlds behind us, as well as worlds just beyond the horizon.
Introduction, Context, and the Worlds of JRRT
Scott Hodgman is a native of Northern California transplanted to Atlanta, Georgia. After acquiring a MA in Religious Studies, and studying theology with Jesuits in the Bay Area, he returned to Georgia where he and his wife are raising two precocious kids into another generation of Tolkien enthusiasts.
Rekindling an Old Light: Telling the Stories
Adam Tyler lives in rural Appomattox, Virginia, with his wife Cadance and two young children. A pastor by trade and historian by training, Adam discovered Tolkien’s writings in college and has voraciously read them ever since. He holds a Doctor of Ministry from Palmer Seminary. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Adam decided to explore Tolkien and his work from a more scholarly perspective, enrolling in the Tolkien Studies certificate program through Signum University and connecting with the wider Tolkien community through social media.
Tolkien, the Pre-Raphaelites, and the Oxford Union Library
Emily Austin is an artist and small business owner living in northern Indiana. She is currently finishing up her MA in Tolkien Studies at Signum and enjoys creating artwork inspired by stories.
Seashores, Sea Journeys
Lynn Schlesinger taught Sociology for 20+ years at SUNY Plattsburgh, specializing in the sociology of health and illness, and disability studies. She is now pursuing a Masters degree at Signum University In addition to parenting a teenager, teaching and advising as an adjunct, and raising three dogs. She’s proud to be a role model for lifelong learners.
The Borgarvirki and The Wanderings of Hurin
Joe Nagar is an electrical engineer living in Maryland. He has a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Penn State University and is currently working on an MA in Tolkien Studies from Signum University. He enjoys going to concerts, playing video games, and owning pets.
Waymarks through Faërie
N. Trevor Brierly is a software engineer with more than 20 years of experience in the industry. He has a background in literature with an MLIS from the University of Texas at Austin and a BA in English from George Mason University. He is currently working on a Masters in Language and Literature from Signum University, with a concentration in Tolkien Studies. He is co-editor of “Dune for the 21st Century” an edited volume of essays on Frank Herbert’s Dune saga, forthcoming from MacFarland.
Enterprise
Slack Channel: #chat-2-enterprise
Cosplay Saves the Day
Julie Dick
The character Osgood was introduced to the audience of Doctor Who in the 50th anniversary special “Day of the Doctor.” Everything about her is meant to identify with the audience–from her job in UNIT to the multi-colored scarf around her neck. Executive producer Steven Moffat and actress Ingrid Oliver have both confirmed that interpretation, calling Osgood a ‘fangirl’ and a ‘cosplayer.’ Individual fans and geek communities also picked up on the similarities, to the point where the website Tor.com titled a blurb about her return “Obvious Doctor Who Fan Stand-In Character Not Murdered After All!”
But Osgood grows beyond her initial role as an audience identification character. Her compassion and cleverness lead her to a critical role in keeping the peace. In the end, her mimicry of the Doctor inspires others to take up a similar role, which saves the day.
Julie Dick is a Signum University student who spends a lot of time overthinking speculative fiction.
Fashion of Fictional Realities
Karita Alexander, Marie Prosser, Laurel Stevens
What a character is wearing may seem an odd or shallow thing to care about. Aren’t a character’s actions of higher importance to the plot or the audience? However, clothing can say things we never see or hear explained about characters, cultures, and worldbuilding in the media we consume, from comics and TV shows to books, games, and films. How fashion in created worlds is approached has changed over time as well. In this interactive panel (yes, we want you to chime in) we will bring up several fashion examples in science-fiction and fantasy and look at what we can, or perhaps are meant to, infer from them. After all, what can Picard’s pajamas tell us about him? Or how about the clone troop armor or the costuming choices in She-Ra? Are there cultural, political, or personal details on display in the clothes we see characters wear?
We will bring our views to the table and we want to hear the audience’s opinion as well. Personal opinion on aesthetic choices in dated movies to the cultural implications of fashion choices for media set in the distant futures and other worlds are all welcome topics. Fashion can give us surprising insights into created realities and the hands that had a role in bringing them to life.
Karita Alexander lives in the mythical midwest, and spends a lot of time working on old houses and reading old books when she isn’t hard at work for Signum doing magic.
Marie Prosser read The Lord of the Rings when she was 12 years old, and I think you can guess the rest of the story. Her main involvement with Signum University is spending entirely too much time on the Silmarillion Film Project.
Laurel Stevens watches many shows simply to look at the clothes and is a current Signum student who is often found reading. He BA in English is from Westminster College, and she will happily talk your ear off about books and fashion in books.
Lyonesse
Slack Channel: #chat-3-lyonesse
Past, Present, and Future on the Map of the Stillness in N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season
Stentor Danielson
When N.K. Jemisin included a map in The Fifth Season (the first book of her Broken Earth trilogy), she did more than simply bow to a convention of the fantasy genre that her earlier works had refused. The published map complements the way that the text plays with time in telling the interleaved stories of Damaya/Syenite/Essun, and the worldbuilding premise of dramatic geological change during the titular “fifth seasons.” The map thus serves not as a fixed or static spatial representation of the story, but rather as a reminder of the dynamic nature of her story and an echo of the limits of her characters’ knowledge of their changing world.
Stentor Danielson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography, Geology, and the Environment at Slippery Rock University. They are also the proprietor of Mapsburgh, an online shop producing fantasy-style maps.
Travel and Boundaries: An Exploration in Children’s Literature
Cynthia Smith
This paper will explore how various authors have treated both travel and boundaries in children’s literature, and why they have made the choices they have. Is it due to audience or genre or both or something else altogether? Works to be considered will include The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien and journeys into fairy, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis and journeys through portals, A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin and journeys into death and life, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle and journeys through science, The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper and journeys using magic, Howl’s Moving Castle and Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones and “ordinary” journeys and journeys through other dimensions, and The High King by Lloyd Alexander and once again journeys through fairy and death.
Cynthia Smith is a librarian by day and Tolkien enthusiast by night and a graduate of Signum University. She features one of the less famous books by Tolkien each month on her Vlog Cindy’s Library.
The Myth Ahead
David Heinitz
The earliest recorded foundational mythologies included multiple types of reasoning beings, but approximately 1500 years ago these began to be dominated in the west by mythologies with only one, or a few, non-human reasoning beings. In the last 500 years, the supremacy of science-based explanation has shrunken most conceptualizations of such beings down even further to only those we can perceive with our senses, namely humans, animals with observable human-like intelligence, and possibly human-like extraterrestrials. Yet the very methods that have moved us from polytheistic myth and monotheistic myth to science-based myth also indicate the possibility of an infinitely large universe made up of infinitely small particles. Across this immeasurably wide spectrum, man, or those things like him, would constitute an extremely narrow band of reality, and would be unlikely to represent the only reasoning beings in existence. Instead, is it possible to frame a myth that contains a pantheon of beings with both less and more reasoning, intelligence, and wisdom than man, each made of different amounts of the infinitely small particles of the universe, up to and including the sum of all existence as a reasoning entity? While it may be difficult for beings at one level of this spectrum to perceive or even conceive of those at another (e.g. bacteria may only perceive their human hosts as an environment, while humans perceive the actions of the seas or planets as following the modern concept of laws of nature), would it be possible to conceptualize them in myth and story, and avoid making man “the measure of all things?” From this perspective, ancient polytheism, middle-age monotheism, and modern scientific views may not be wholly at odds, and in the world ahead they could be blended into a single, overarching mythology.
David Heinitz is a retired U.S. Air Force Fighter Pilot with a BS in Physics and master’s degrees in Aviation Science and Military Operational Art & Science. He currently works as an Operations Research Analyst for the Department of Defense.
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