Tolkien Society Seminar 2025

One of the things I got to do last year, in amongst finishing one degree and starting another, moving cities, and taking on generally Too Much, was the Tolkien Society Seminar. The co-chairs were my wonderful friend and co-conspirator Clare Moore, and Journee Cotton, and the title was "Arda's Entangled Bodies and Environments" – so right up my street off the bat!

The videos from that seminar are finally up on YouTube, and I'm really excited to be able to share them! The whole playlist is here, and I highly recommend watching all the presentations – the ones I got to see on the day were amazing and I'm looking forward to a full re-watch (especially the ones knocked out by the migraine that dumped itself on me just after I was done...)

My presentation (below) was called "Death Downs, Dead Marshes, and Green Hills: Embodied Morality and Ecological Corruption in Arda." It was a super fun opportunity to tangle together ecology, storytelling, and how different races/species in Arda change the land around them, particularly after death. In this case, these things draw a particular attention to how Orcs operate in the natural environments of Arda, and reinforce some of the less comfortable parts of how they're characterised.

I hope you enjoy catching up with the talks! I'm getting back to my current uni deadline, final edits on my ace article and the version of this presentation that will be in the Proceedings volume for the seminar, and preparing for the grand Silmarillion read-through I'm running for some of my friends. Until next time!