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Tolkien, fandom, critique, and ‘critical joy’: A conversation

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Notes

  1. To view the issue, see https://pubs.lib.uiowa.edu/stuarthall/issue/11264/info/.

  2. Reid’s bibliographical essay (2017) is a wonderful resource in terms of the scholars, articles, and publications that up until 2017 had discussed the topics of race and racism in Tolkien’s literary production and its adaptations.

  3. The Tolkien’s Society Summer Seminar 2021 was dedicated to the subject of ‘Tolkien and Diversity.’ In 2020, the Tolkien Society’s Oxonmoot included the panels on ‘Diversity in Tolkien Scholarship and Fandom” and “New Voices in Tolkien Scholarship.’

  4. That being said, I would also like to clearly acknowledge the differences and boundaries between my experience and construction of joy as a POC, and Black joy as experienced by Black writers, readers, fans, and scholars.

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Editors’ note: What follows is the first of what will be an ongoing genre in the pages of postmedieval—that of the dialogue, where a pair of thinkers share a conversation in print. In this case, we’re grateful to two scholars for accepting our invitation to discuss J.R.R. Tolkien, fandom, reception, and critique, as a follow-up to Kathy Lavezzo’s ‘Whiteness, medievalism, immigration: rethinking Tolkien through Stuart Hall’ (Lavezzo 2021). Lavezzo is joined by Mariana Rios Maldonado, a PhD candidate who is currently completing her thesis on Ethics and Otherness in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth Narratives at the University of Glasgow.

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Lavezzo, K., Rios Maldonado, M. Tolkien, fandom, critique, and ‘critical joy’: A conversation. Postmedieval 14, 231–248 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-022-00262-y

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