Abstract
J.R.R. Tolkien’s fiction has been identified with the medieval world, and with medieval studies, from the beginning. In this presentation, I acknowledge the extent to which Tolkien scholarship is indebted to the medievalists who established the cornerstone upon which we have all built. Current publications in queer approaches to Tolkien and feminist approaches are growing, but queer scholarship tends to focus on male characters and feminist scholarship on (straight) female characters. What is currently missing in Tolkien scholarship, based on the bibliographic scholarship I have done in the past ten years, is work by feminist queer medievalist scholars and scholarship. That lack is worth noticing given the forty-year history of feminist medieval scholarship at Kalamazoo which started in 1984 when three feminist medievalists met by chance after that year’s Congress and ended up creating the Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality. The first issue was published in 1986, and the journal is still being published. This project is the start of beginning to think through what feminist queer medievalist scholarship might do in regard to Tolkien’s legendarium, its adaptations, and transformative works.
Recommended Citation
Reid, Robin A.
(2025)
"Wanted: More Feminist Queer Medievalists in Tolkien Scholarship,"
Journal of Tolkien Research: Vol. 23:
Iss.
2, Article 10.
Available at:
https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol23/iss2/10
Comments
This presentation was given at the “Queer and Feminist Medievalisms” paper session at the International Congress for Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo) on May 14, 2026. The session topic invited scholars to give critical attention to a host of important issues (gender, language, narrativity, sex, sexuality, and transgender identity/expression) in Tolkien’s legendarium within the theoretical discourses of feminist and queer theories as well as intersections with class, race, religion, or other topics.