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Originally published, anonymously, in Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, Issue 17: Saturday, May 26, 1832.   I have much pleasure in bringing under the notice of the people of Great Britain generally, an institution calculated to be of the greatest service in the diffusion of knowledge, but which is as yet little known beyond the limits of a particular district in Scotland. About forty years ago, or shortly after the impulse given to the public mind by the revolution in France, an urgent demand began to be manifested over most parts of Scotland for the perusal of instructive publications, less limited in their range in literature thanRead More →

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In: Meditations on Tolkien

Recently I wrote an article for Tor.com about Éowyn. In it, I suggested that the Shieldmaiden and Faramir give up war and become pacifists. It seems that a lot of people were unhappy with my comment–or they at least disagreed–so I’m writing this to explain what I couldn’t in that article: exactly how I came to that conclusion and what evidence supports my claim. Obviously there isn’t the space even here to explain everything: that’s what I do in my thesis. However, I can say that I came to that conclusion after almost a hundred pages of intense research, analysis, and argumentation. I can’t reproduceRead More →

banner advertising the exhibit

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I stood at the foot of the ramp leading up to the Morgan Library for a few minutes, drawing deep breaths and staring up at the heavy, tinted glass doors. This is it, I thought. I’m finally going to see Tolkien’s work in person. I’d been trying to make my way to this once-in-a-generation exhibit for quite some time–since last semester (Fall 2018), to be exact, when it opened at the Bodleian in Oxford, England. But funding for international travel for graduate students is slim, especially when that travel doesn’t involve giving a presentation, and even more so when the graduate student is a lowly MARead More →

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If you’d asked me about my digital presence a month ago, I probably would have stared at you with a rather vacant expression on my face, eventually shrugged, and squirmed out of the uncomfortable moment with something like: “I mean, I’m on Twitter…” The truth is, no one had ever talked to me about online presence and public scholarship in any detail, so I had absolutely no idea what I was lacking. I’m a notorious lurker on Facebook — when I even bother to log in at all — and my personal Twitter account is completely private and (I’ll admit) mostly existing for the unholyRead More →