UVM Tolkien Conference

Ok, so if I was better at this whole blogging thing I would’ve had a whole bunch of posts earlier leading up to UVM’s annual Tolkien Conference. Anyway, it was this past weekend, and it started on Friday night with the fireside readings at the Henderson Cafe in the Davis Center, and continued on Saturday starting with a breakfast at 8am followed by the speakers and presenters. The keynote speaker this year was Jane Chance, and she gave a nice presentation called, “‘In the Company of Orcs’: Peter Jackson’s Queer Tolkien”. No, not what you first think of it. Rather it was about this section in the extended version of Return of the King where Frodo and Sam are marching with a bunch of orcs and how this whole scene relates to the hobbits losing part of their identity and becoming more orcish and how it relates to their nature and scars them for a really long time… I also attended a couple of the other speaker’s presentations. They were all really well done, but I felt a little intimidated by their plethora of Tolkien knowledge since I’ve only read the books once. However, my favorite part was later in the evening. Because I am enrolled in Professor Vaccaro’s Tolkien’s Middle Earth class I was able to sign up to request to go to the dinner that he has every night of the conference and have my meal paid for by the University’s English department. Out of 5 people he chose from my class, he selected me, which was really, really, exciting. The dinner was really enjoyable. There were a bunch of people who attend, both from my class and various speakers from the conference, plus just people who come just for fun. I think that was definitely my favorite part of the conference. It’s always nice to get free food from the school. My tuition at work.