Tolkien Studies Area, PCA, Program
Here is the final1 schedule for the presentations, roundtables, and workshop for the Tolkien Studies Area at the 2025 Popular Culture Association’s (PCA) conference (in New Orleans!).
I’ve been tracking the presentations given since created I the area: you can see the history from 2014 here as well as some of the background if you’re interested.
If you think you’d be interested in attending the conference this year, or in the future, you can read more about the conference at the PCA webpage.
“Popular Culture” studies is a large and multi-disciplinary field: there are over 100 Areas (focusing on different aspects/topics/periods/genres/etc.) in popular culture.
If you have any questions about PCA (F2F conferences for the near future), I’ll be happy to answer them!
2025 New Orleans
TOLKIEN STUDIES I: Númenóreans, Valkyries, and Fans
Moderator: Robin Anne Reid
“‘Madness and Sickness Assailed Them'”: Death and Disability in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Second Age” Clare Moore
“Tolkien’s Monstrous Valkyries–A Discussion of the Monstrous Feminine in Middle-Earth” Katherine Reed
“A ‘Tolkien’ of One’s Own: Women Making Their Own ‘Tolkiens’” Robin Anne Reid
TOLKIEN STUDIES II: Rings of Power (Roundtable) FAN STUDIES CO-SPONSOR
Moderator: Robin Anne Reid
Presenters: Bianca Beronio, Tim Lenz, Alicia Fox-Lenz, Alexander Sergeant
TOLKIEN STUDIES III: The Hobbits and Their Creator
Moderator: Robin Anne Reid
“Romanticism in Tolkien’s The Hobbit: Nature and Domestic Life as a Force for Good” James Schultz
“‘A mighty Warrior, even a Hero’: An Analysis of Non-Traditional Gendering and Heroism in The Hobbit” Chase Read
“The Fair and Perilous Realm: Tolkien’s complicated relationship with his creative drive” Alicia Fox-Lenz
TOLKIEN STUDIES IV: Moderating Online Tolkien Spaces (Workshop)
Moderators: Timothy Lenz & Alicia Fox-Lenz
“Digital Helm’s Deep: Moderation of online Tolkien spaces to maintain safety for scholarship/fandom”
TOLKIEN STUDIES V: The Lord of the Rings & Rings of Power
Moderator: Robin Anne Reid
“Justice, Civil Disobedience, and Rule Departure in The Lord of the Rings” John Whitmire
“Parallels Between OCD and the Psychological Effects of the One Ring on Frodo Baggins” Andreas Minshew
“Decolonizing Middle-earth: An Indigenous Scholar's Perspective on The Rings of Power” Bianca Beronio
TOLKIEN STUDIES VI: How to Publish Tolkien Scholarship: Journals, Anthologies, & Monographs (Roundtable)
Moderator: Janet Brennan Croft
Presenters: Yvette Kisor, Janet Brennan Croft, Leslie Donovan, Nicholas Katsiadas; Clare Moore, Robin Anne Reid
TOLKIEN STUDIES VII: BUSINESS MEETING
Moderators: Janet Brennan Croft and Bianca Beronio
Final in the sense of what we have in the program as of today; there can be changes before (and during) the conference because sometimes people have to withdraw because Life is what interferes with Plans, but I don’t anticipate any major changes (well, unless something happens that is hugely catastrophic and affects the conference as a whole which for some reason at this moment in time I am not completely sure is unlikely to happen). ↩
