Scholarship

Terry Pratchett’s Ethical Worlds also contains my article “Carrot, Kingship, and the Ethics of Choice.”

Terry Pratchett’s writing celebrates the possibilities opened up by inventiveness and imagination. It constructs an ethical stance that values informed and self-aware choices, knowledge of the world in which one makes those choices, the importance of play and humor in crafting a compassionate worldview, and acts of continuous self-examination and creation. This collection of essays uses inventiveness and creation as a thematic core to combine normally disparate themes, such as science fiction studies, the effect of collaborative writing and shared authorship, steampunk aesthetics, productive modes of “ownership,” intertextuality, neomedievalism and colonialism, adaptations into other media, linguistics and rhetorics, and coming of age as an act of free will.

In all Pratchett’s constructed worlds and narratives—from Discworld, to the sciencefictional flat planet of Strata, from a parody of Conan the Barbarian’s Cimmeria to the comedically apocalyptic Good Omens—questions of identity, community, and the relations between self and other are constantly examined, debated, and reshaped. Pratchett’s worlds thus become ethical worlds: fantasies in which language always matters, stories resonate with the past and the future, and choices emphasize the importance of compassion and creation.

Shakespare and Geek Culture, edited by Andrew Hartley and Peter Hollard, includes my essay “‘I opened a door, that is all’: Neil Gaiman’s Decidedly Human Shakespeare in the Sandman.

From sci-fi to graphic novels, from boy scouts to board games, from cult films to the cult of theatre, Shakespeare is everywhere in popular culture. Where there is popular culture there are fans and nerds and geeks. The essays in this collection on Shakespeare and Geek Culture take an innovative approach to the study of Shakespeare's cultural presences, situating his works, his image and his brand to locate and explore the nature of that geekiness that, the authors argue, is a vital but unrecognized feature of the world of those who enjoy and are obsessed by Shakespeare, whether they are scholars, film fans, theatre-goers or members of legions of other groupings in which Shakespeare plays his part. Working at the intersections of a wide range of fields -- including fan studies and film analysis, cultural studies and fantasy/sci-fi theory – the authors demonstrate how the particularities of the connection between Shakespeare and geek culture generate new insights into the plays, poems and their larger cultural legacy in the 21st century.

Terry Pratchett’s Narrative Worlds, edited by Marion Rana, includes my essay “‘At Time’s like This it’s Traditional that a Hero Comes Forth’: Romance and Identity in Terry Pratchett’s Guards! Guards!”

This book highlights the multi-dimensionality of the work of British fantasy writer and Discworld creator Terry Pratchett. Taking into account content, political commentary, and literary technique, it explores the impact of Pratchett's work on fantasy writing and genre conventions.With chapters on gender, multiculturalism, secularism, education, and relativism, Section One focuses on different characters’ situatedness within Pratchett’s novels and what this may tell us about the direction of his social, religious and political criticism. Section Two discusses the aesthetic form that this criticism takes, and analyses the post- and meta-modern aspects of Pratchett’s writing, his use of humour, and genre adaptations and deconstructions. This is the ideal collection for any literary and cultural studies scholar, researcher or student interested in fantasy and popular culture in general, and in Terry Pratchett in particular.

Flaying in the Pre-Modern World: Practice and Representation, edited by Larissa Tracy, includes my essay “Reading the Consumed: Flayed and Cannibalized Bodies in The Siege of Jerusalem and Richard Coer de Lyon.”

The practice and the representation of flaying in the middle ages and after are considered in this provocative collection. Skin is the parchment upon which identity is written; class, race, ethnicity, and gender are all legible upon the human surface. Removing skin tears away identity, and leaves a blank slate upon which law, punishment, sanctity, or monstrosity can be inscribed; whether as an act of penal brutality, as a comic device, or as a sign of spiritual sacrifice, it leaves a lasting impression about the qualities and nature of humanity. Flaying often functioned as an imaginative resource for medieval and early modern artists and writers, even though it seems to have been rarely practiced in reality.

From images of Saint Bartholomew holding his skin in his arms, to scenes of execution in Havelok the Dane, to laws that prescribed it as a punishment for treason, this volume explores the idea and the reality of skin removal - flaying - in the Middle Ages. It interrogates the connection between reality and imagination in depictions of literal skin removal, rather than figurative or theoretical interpretations of flaying, and offers a multilayered view of medieval and early modern perceptions of flaying and its representations in European culture. Its two parts consider practice and representation, capturing the evolution of flaying as both an idea and a practice in the premodern world.

Contributors: Frederika Bain, Peter Dent, Kelly DeVries, Valerie Gramling, Perry Neil Harrison, Jack Hartnell, Emily Leverett, Michael Livingston, Sherry C.M. Lindquist, Asa Mittman, Mary Rambaran-Olm, William Sayers, Christine Sciacca, Susan Small, Larissa Tracy, Renée Ward

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Complete list of Academic Publications

“’I opened a door; that is all’: Neil Gaiman’s Decidedly Human Shakespeare in the Sandman. Shakespeare and Geek Culture. Peter D. Holland and Andrew J. Hartley, eds. New York: Arden Shakespeare, a subdivision of Bloomberg Academic, 2020.

Ethics and Choice in the Worlds of Terry Pratchett (edited essay collection) with Kristin Noone. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2020 (forthcoming).  

“Carrot Ironfounderrson: Medieval Romance, Narrative Causality, and the Ethics of Choice in Guards! Guards!” in Ethics and Choice in the Worlds of Terry Pratchett. Eds. Kristin Noone and Emily Lavin Leverett. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2020 (forthcoming)

“’At Times like This It’s Traditional that a Hero Comes Forth’: Romance and Identity in Terry Pratchett’s Guards! Guards!” Terry Pratchett’s Narrative Worlds: From Giant Turtles to Small Gods. Ed. Marion Rana. New York: Palgrave 2018.

“Reading the Consumed: Flayed and Cannibalized Bodies in The Siege of Jerusalem and Richard Coer de Lyon.” Flaying in the Premodern World: Practice and Representation. Larissa Tracy, ed. New York: Boydell and Brewer, 2017.

"An Affective Romance?: Gender Blending in the Siege of Jerusalem." Medieval Perspectives. 27: (October 2012).