The Mythological Dimensions of Neil Gaiman

by Burke, Jessica

  Jason Fisher is an independent and award-winning scholar specializing in J.R.R. Tolkien and the Inklings, fantasy literature, and linguistics. His most recent book is Tolkien and the Study of His Sources: Critical Essays (McFarland, 2011). Other publications include entries in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment (Routledge, 2006); contributions to eight books (three forthcoming); essays in Tolkien Studies, Mythlore, The Year’s Work in Medievalism, Beyond Bree, North Wind, Renaissance; and many, many book reviews. Jason has spoken at academic conferences across the United States and will be a special guest at the Tolkien Society’s Return of the Ring conference at Loughborough University in Leicestershire in 2012. Jason is also the editor of Mythprint, the monthly publication of the Mythopoeic Society (http:// www.mythprint.org). You can contact Jason at his blog, Lingwë – Musings of a Fish (http://lingwe.blogspot.com/), where he has been discussing J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, J.K. Rowling, and related topics since 2007.

  Camillo A. Formigatti took a degree in classical studies (main field Oriental and Linguistic Studies) in 2004 at the Università degli Studi di Milano. From October 2000 to July 2004 and from October 2004 till May 2008 he attended classes on Indological and Tibetological subjects at the Institute for Indological and Tibetological Studies of the PhilippsUniversität Marburg, Germany. He worked in the library of the same institute from November 2007 till May 2008. Since June 2008 he has been a member of the Research Group “Manuscript Cultures in Asia and Africa” at the University of Hamburg, Germany.

  Lynn Gelfand is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Advancing Technology and holds a Ph.D. in Folklore from Indiana University. Her research interests include folk narratives (myths, legends, and fairy tales), comparative media studies (orality, writing, print, film, and digital technologies), and the intersecting points between narratives and games.

  Melody Green received her Ph.D. in English Studies with a specialization in Children’s Literature in 2008 from Illinois State University. Currently she is adjuncting at two schools, Lewis University in Romeoville, IL, and DeVry Online. At Lewis she teaches composition classes, and for DeVry she teaches composition and Science Fiction. She has read papers on J. R. R. Tolkien, George MacDonald, and fantasy literature at several academic conferences, and is currently at work on several writing projects. Her other publications include “The Riddle of Strider: A Cognitive Linguistic Reading” published in The Ring Goes Ever On: Proceedings of the Tolkien 2005 Conference and “‘It Turned Out they Died For Nothing:’ Doctor Who and the Idea of Sacrificial Death” in The Mythological Dimensions of Doctor Who.

  Colin B. Harvey is a fantasy writer, journalist, and academic. His short story The Stinker won the inaugural SFX Pulp Idol award in 2006. He has authored BBC-licensed Doctor Who spinoff material for the British company Big Finish and is the writer of Love and Hate, the second episode in the Highlander audio series produced by Big Finish under license from MGM. Colin is the originator of the London Peculiar steampunk stories, as published in the magazine Steampunk Tales and the forthcoming anthology Clockwork Chaos (American Library of Science Fiction and Fantasy). He is the author of the academic volume Grand Theft Auto: Motion-Emotion (Ludologica 2005) and has written academic articles on Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who, the latter for the preceding volume in this series. Colin has authored and presented academic papers on Highlander, Tron, and Ghostbusters, and forthcoming publications will explore steampunk and the transmediality of Conan the Barbarian. As a journalist he has written for The Guardian, Edge, Retrogamer, Develop, Strange Horizons,and Vector, the journal of the British Science Fiction Association.

  Matthew Hills is a Reader in Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University, and the author of Triumph of a Time Lord (IB Tauris, 2010) as well as a contributor to Mythological Dimensions of Doctor Who (Kitsune, 2010). His current research includes a follow-up book on Torchwood, a journal article on the use of sound in BBC Wales’ Who, and book chapters on topics such as scholar-fandom and cult movies.

  Tanya Carinae Pell Jones is 28 years old and lives in Charlotte, NC with her husband, Doug, and their two dogs, Arwyn and Lycan. She teaches high school English at Lincoln Charter School in Denver, NC. Her graduate thesis focuses on the Gothic in children’s literature and its use in the high school classroom. She is particularly fond of high heels, sushi, and random trivia.

  Tony Keen teaches Classical Studies and Film and Television History for the Open University. He is co-editor of The Unsilent Library: Essays on the Russell T. Davies Era of the New Doctor Who, published by the Science Fiction Foundation in February 2011, and is writing a chapter on “Science Fiction” for the Blackwell Companion to the Reception of Classical Myth.

  Chelsey Kendig is an MA student of Children’s Literature at Simmons College in Boston. The groundwork for this essay was done during a close study of The Chronicles of Narniaduring her time as a visiting student at Magdalen College, Oxford. “The Problem of Susan” is especially important to her, since it marked the first work that introduced her to the possibility of children’s literature studies.

  Kristine Larsen has inhabited the space-time of Connecticut since her birth in 1963. She has been an aficionado from an early age of equal parts world mythology and religions, science fiction and fantasy, and scientific literature. Her long career in astronomy education and outreach draws heavily upon her diverse intellectual interests, including numerous publications and presentations on the intersection between science and science fiction/fantasy. She is currently Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Central Connecticut State University.

  Lynnette Porter , Ph.D., is a professor of humanities and communication at Embry-Riddle University in Daytona Beach, Florida, and loves to write about television, film, and literature, especially science fiction and fantasy. Since 2011 she has been a contributing editor for PopMatters and writes a monthly column, Deep Focus. Her published works include The Hobbits (Tauris); Tarnished Heroes, Charming Villains, and Modern Monsters (McFarland); LOST’s Buried Treasures (Sourcebooks); and forthcoming books about Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who. She frequently is a speaker at academic conferences as well as fan conventions throughout North America, the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand.

  Harley J. Sims received his Ph.D. in English from the University of Toronto in 2009, and is presently an independent scholar living in Ottawa, Canada. Aside from scholarly publications on medieval literature, he has written popular articles on Batman, Beowulf, and the Twilightseries, as well as reviews of linguistic and medieval titles for the scholarly journal Mythlore; he has also presented academic papers at international conferences in both Canada and the United States. His research focuses primarily on the imaginative aspects of literature, particularly the interaction of language, reality, and imagination. His website is at www.harleyjsims.webs.com

  Matthew Dow Smith is a comic book artist and writer. He has drawn comics for every major American comic book publisher, including Sandman Mystery Theater—a spin-off of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series— for DC/Vertigo, and IDW Publishing’s Doctor Who. Like Gaiman, he owns several black leather jackets and has been photographed in a Fourth Doctor scarf. His first novel, Night Folk, has only a few gods in it, but he is currently working on a second novel, which features even more gods, but nowhere near as many as Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  PRINT MEDIA: BOOKS

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