Awards & Honors
At Mythgard Institute, we are incredibly proud of all of our students and their achievements in academic research both inside the classroom and beyond. This drive to further scholarship of the worlds found within an individual’s favorite works is precisely why Mythgard faculty endeavor to offer people everywhere an opportunity to learn what they love.
“Praise them with great praise!” - ROTK VI.iv.
While Mythgard Institute is still a young higher learning endeavor, our students are already impressing their peers and the experts with their research and writing.
These are but a few examples of what will surely be many student conference presentations, published works and scholarly prizes.
Summer 2013
Kris Swank
- “Tom Bombadil’s Last Song: Tolkien’s ‘Once Upon A Time’”
Forty-Eighth International Congress on Medieval Studies
Laura Smith
- “Songs of Peril in The Hobbit”
Kris Swank
- “Black and Liminal in Camelot”
Real Myth and Mithril
Kris Swank
- Scholar Guest of Honor
“Good Plain Food: Diet and Virtue in the Fantasy Worlds of Tolkien and Lewis”
Spring 2013
Potter Watch 2013
Ryan Joy
- “How Harry Sees the World”
Ashley Thomas
- “The Function of Poetry in Harry Potter”
Valparaiso University Conference on Tolkien and His Works
Trish Lambert
- “From Ear to Eye… to Film: The Transformation of The Hobbit”
Laura Smith
- “This of course is the way to talk to dragons: etiquette-based humor in The Hobbit”
Kris Swank
- “The Hobbit and Father Christmas”
Fall 2012
Woode-walkers Hobbit Symposium
Trish Lambert
- “Snow White and Bilbo Baggins: Disney, Tolkien… and Jackson”
- “Teaching Tolkien at St. Louis Community College”
- “The History of Middle-earth Network Radio”
Summer 2012
The Return of the Ring
Sara Brown
- “There’s No Place Like Home: Place, Protection and Belonging in Tolkien’s Legendarium”
Andrew Higgins
- “Richard Wagner and J.R.R. Tolkien: A Portrait of Two Sub-creators”
Isaac Juan Tomas
- “Applying Tolkien’s Eucatastrophy to Ged and A Wizard of Earthsea”
Sandra Hall
- “Tolkien and languages: how Tolkien used language to create Middle-earth”
Mythopoeic Society Conference 2012 (Mythcon 43)
Alyssa House Thomas
- Winner – Alexei Kondratiev Award
“The Wondrous Orientalism of Lord Dunsany”
Published in Mythlore
Kelly Orazi
- “Through the Wardrobe and Under-Hill: World and Setting in Children’s Fantasy Literature”
Scott Holbrook-Foust
- “Two Trees Twining: Rays of Light in the Northern Night”
Penelope Holdaway
- “The Phoenix and the Leaf”
Laura Smith
- “Who Moved My Hoard: The Reluctant Traveler Meets the Dragon”
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