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Oxonmoot programme announced – includes exclusive visit to Bodleian exhibition

The Tolkien Society is pleased to announce the full programme for this year’s Oxonmoot, including the full list of speakers and artists, as well as an exclusive visit to the Bodleian Library to see the Maker of Middle-earth exhibition and a keynote lecture from John Garth.

The event will take place at St Antony’s College, Oxford from Thursday 20th to Sunday 23rd September, taking place over the weekend of Bilbo and Frodo’s birthday. The Society has been holding Oxonmoots annually since 1974, and the event constitutes the main annual gathering of the Society. It is open to members and non-members, the only thing necessary is an interest in Tolkien!

Timetable

Thursday

Guests usually arrive at St Antony’s on the Thursday afternoon for registration (to sign in, collect their name badges and any ordered extras such as t-shirts and books), before a two-hour walking tour of Oxford takes place from 4pm. The tour is a good opportunity to walk around and see a little more of Oxford, as well as meet and chat to other attendees.

On returning to the college, we will hold a welcome event for First Timers at 6.30pm (as the name suggests, those for whom this is their Oxonmoot) followed by a break for dinner. Later in the evening at 9pm, we will be holding a fiendishly difficult pub quiz where you can test your mettle against others. Or, you can just sit it out and watch the fun unfold!

Friday and Saturday daytime

The bulk of the event takes place on the Friday and Saturday daytimes. In the two lecture theatres we will be running two full streams of talks and papers (the full list below) from 9am-5pm which will no doubt educate, inform and entertain. Our keynote speaker is John Garth, who is speaking on “Atlantis and Mars: New Light on Tolkien, Lewis, and their Science-Fiction Pact”.

Frodo Baggins icon by Jay Johnstone
Frodo Baggins icon by Jay Johnstone

Running alongside this, we will have the dealers’ room, from which you can buy a range of books, artwork and collectibles from specialist Tolkien dealers; next door to this, will be art show, showing a host of Tolkien artists including:

And if that wasn’t enough, in addition to that, we will have our arts and crafts room where you can draw, knit, Lego and even grow a dwarven beard in one of workshops!

On the Saturday, almost every attendee will be present, so included within the registration is Saturday lunch which will take place in the bar and dining hall, alongside the Hobbit Bake-Off!

Friday evening

On the Friday evening, following the dinner (for those who have booked), we will be hosting our Ents and masquerade. This will be a chance for attendees to showcase the best of their creative costumes, as well as perform entertainments such as singing, poetry and even a game show!

You will also find that if you head to the bar, a number of groups will be playing board and card games into the early hours and you will no doubt be invited to join in. There may even be the odd room party to attend as well!

Saturday evening

On the Saturday evening, we will be heading to the Weston Library at the Bodleian for a Tolkien Society-only exclusive visit to the Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth. We have a two-hour slot from 7pm to 9pm, and attendees will have half an hour to browse through the exhibition.

Thereafter, you can head back to the college for more bar games, as well as the Telerin Circle (which pops up ad-hoc over the weekend) as a chance for people to share their favourite Tolkien readings.

Sunday

Sunday is the conclusion of Oxonmoot and ends with Enyalië, the Quenya word for “remembrance”. At 11am on Sunday we head to Tolkien’s grave at Wolvercote Cemetery where a short reading and a performance of Namárië in memory of J.R.R. Tolkien and the works that brought us together.

Afterwards, you will find various daytime “after parties” around Oxford where people get together for one final drink before heading off.

How to book

Places are extremely limited for this year’s Oxonmoot. You can book meals until Friday 24th August, and you can still book registration via our website until we have completely sold out. Places are limited to 270 and we are currently at 255.

List of speakers

John Garth, our keynote speaker at Oxonmoot 2018
  • “Who choose Tolkien on Desert Island Discs?” by Chris Barclay
  • “Worth a thousand words? Analysis of photographs and themes” by Denis Bridoux
  • “Putting the ‘She’ is Shelob: Femininity, Fear and Spiders in Pagan Mythology” by Daisy Butcher
  • “Niggle’s Parish and Frodo’s Sam: The Function of the ‘Companion’ in Tolkien’s Literary Works” by Aslı Bülbül Candaş
  • “Ho! Ho! Ho! To the bottle I go ” by David Doughan
  • “Prospective Nostalgia in The Silmarillion” by Ellen Duncan
  • “Affinities between Dorothy L. Sayers and the Inklings circle of C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, and Charles Williams” by Colin Duriez
  • “The Mirror of Galadriel: myth and magic in Tolkien” by Valentina Fatichenti
  • “Faith Overcomes Fear: How Christ Figures in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings Offer Salvation from Drowning Doubts” by McKell Ferguson
  • “Uncle ‘Curro'” by Jose Manuel Ferrandez-Bru
  • “Atlantis and Mars: New Light on Tolkien, Lewis, and their Science-Fiction Pact” by John Garth
  • “The Uttermost West: Tolkien Fans in California in the Early 1960s” by Jane Glaubman
  • “On the Providential Historicism of Middle-earth” by Ryan Haecker
  • “Tolkien in Buckland – An Analysis of the Evidence” by Seamus Hamill-Keays
  • “World-Building and Memory in ‘The Name-List to The Fall of Gondolin’” by Andrew Higgins
  • “Tolkien, Whatever next – an artist inspiration” by Jay Johnstone
  • “Journey to Hobbiton and The Movie Locations of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings in New Zealand” by Peter Kenny
  • “Mindfulness practices and the Tolkien oeuvre” by Derek Kirkham
  • “How it all began…or the beginnings of Tolkien-based fan societies in France and the UK” by Laura Martin-Gomez
  • “The Other Middle-earth: Intertextuality and Iconography in Sergei Iukhimov’s Illustrations for The Lord of the Rings” by Joel Merriner
  • “The Voices of Monsters: Real and/or Imagined?” by Ryder Miller
  • “Where the Mewlips dwell: a post War of the Ring account” by James Moffett
  • “Standing with Sam: Reading an Apocalypse Through the Red Book of Westmarch” by Jeff Moore
  • “Talking Tolkien in the Community” by Roberta Park
  • “Interlacing in Alan Lee’s Works for Tolkien” by Sultana Raza
  • “Took and snaga at chekpoint bravo – the grunts of Lord Of The Rings” by Arnon Reichmann
  • “Farmers Giles and George – Two monarchs and their royal houses compared and contrasted” by Murray Smith
  • “The Wright Stuff, Part Two: ‘The E.D.D. and E, M and W’” by Ian Spittlehouse
  • “Total War and the Eschatology of Peace: Tolkien between Hegel and Levinas” by Fiona Tomkinson
  • “Biblical typology and Tolkien’s retyping in The Silmarillion using Elendil’s voyage as an example” by Michal Waszek
  • “Terry Pratchett’s debt to Tolkien, part two” by Jessica Yates
About the Author: The Tolkien Society
The Tolkien Society is an educational charity and worldwide membership organisation devoted to promoting research into, and educating the public in, the life and works of J.R.R. Tolkien. The Society organises regular events (such as Oxonmoot and Tolkien Reading Day), publishes regular books and journal (such as Amon Hen and Mallorn), and is working towards a permanent home to Tolkien in the UK.