Hello dear readers, here is a kind of Pilgrim in Narnia crossover moment: a panel on L.M. Montgomery and the Fantastic. Drs. Heidi Lawrence, Abigail Heiniger, Trinna Frever, and I are gathering in deep cyberspace to approach this topic from a few different angles. Here is the programme description:
Cinderella Anne, Paranormal Emily, and Astral Heroines Everywhere: L.M. Montgomery and the Fantastic (Conference Panel)
This panel seeks to remedy a significant omission in fantasy fiction studies and L.M. Montgomery studies by exploring Montgomery’s works in a fantastical context. Anticipated topics include Montgomery’s invocation and adaptation of fairy tales, use of the paranormal and otherworldly, depictions of magic and the magical world, and astronomical/cosmological themes in her work.
Session will include short, informal presentations from each scholar discussing their work in this field, moderator questions and panel discussion designed to illuminate the topic(s), and at least thirty minutes of audience Q & A to conclude the session. We hope you can attend!
All of this is part of the Virtual Conference of the Fantastic in the Arts (VICFA). To attend the panel, you need to register for the conference, but the entry bar is low: $10 for students/unfunded scholars and $30-$40 for funded scholars and those who can afford it.
To celebrate the occasion, I played a bit on Canva … and got carried away. Here are two variations of the poster, so feel free to share the one you love best!
I believe in open access scholarship. Because of this, since 2011 I have made A Pilgrim in Narnia free with nearly 1,000 posts on faith, fiction, and fantasy. Please consider sharing my work so others can enjoy it.
As I talked about last week, I have been greatly enriched in my learning by podcasts, lectures, and entire courses. I keep playing with these media myself, but it was listening to Kate Scarth’s “The Life and Works of L.M. Montgomery” that made me decide to launch The Super Great Courses Series so I could share some of my discoveries with others.
First, a caveat.
As is the case with much of the content in this series, I am a friend and colleague of the author. We are the founding producers of the MaudCast, and we work together at the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI). In academic circles, such a lack of objectivity can feel sketchy—though in those circles, we wouldn’t call it “sketchy,” but a faux pas, an indiscretion, an impropriety; it is louche, verboten, an outré approach to scholarship, a solecism on the grammar of academic diction.
While I think blind peer review has its place, if I were to describe this “objective” approach to reviewing materials, I would use a less-than-academic synonym of balderdash. Besides the value of sympathetic reading and listening, why would I spend the time writing up a review on Prof. Daüghnée VonMacSploitergroitson’s mediocre and nonconsequential course on “Wild Water Buffalo Husbandry on the Post-Soviet Steppes”?
When I have such limited audio bandwidth in the space between my ears, why would I even finish listening to such a thing if it wasn’t awesome?
Thus, I will only invest my time listening to and writing about moving and brilliant lectureships and courses. This is why I call the series “The Super Great Courses” and not “Milquetoast Musings on the Mediocre” or “Pensées on Pusillanimous Pedagogical Projects.”
And the truth is this: Kate Scarth is world-class. Besides being on the MaudCast masthead, Kate is the Chair of L.M. Montgomery Studies at UPEI, where she is also a prof in our Applied Communications, Leadership, and Culture program. She edits the Journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies, has a forthcoming monograph on Jane Austen, and … well, she does all the things.
The first lecture of this six-part series uses Montgomery’s legacy to draw us into the intrigue and depth of her life and works. I was part of a faculty team getting a 20-minute preview of this lecture in a campus classroom on a relaxed Friday afternoon. And I saw the 2-minute version of this lecture as part of a panel of dignitaries on an incredibly windy day in front of the Anne of Green Gables Heritage House, where Kate enthralled a crowd in suits and summer dresses, sipping raspberry cordial after being prepared for greatness by Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister.
I also read these lectures in draft form, but already Kate had shaped them so well that I had little I could add. I will come to the content in a moment, but I want you to hear Kate’s voice to capture the essence of what is happening here. I cannot seem to share an Audible preview, but here I am chatting with Kate in an early lockdown interview on the MaudCast:
And here is a little on-campus minidoc, where Kate introduces us to Montgomery’s Charlottetown:
What we get with Kate’s class on “Maud” is the best of literary biography delivered with intimacy and, indeed, humour. Kate is one of those speakers who, once you realize they are smiling as they speak, you can find the inside of everything they have to say. Read this description and you will see that Kate Scarth’s “The Life and Works of LMM” is a worthy addition to the Super Great Courses Series on A Pilgrim in Narnia (even if you don’t have a raspberry cordial right at hand).
Kate Scarth, “The Life and Works of L.M. Montgomery” (The Great Courses, 2025)
Canadian author L. M. Montgomery is best known for her best-selling and beloved novel Anne of Green Gables. But Montgomery was a prolific writer and artist whose output extends well beyond this long-lived masterpiece. Montgomery published 20 novels in her lifetime. She wrote hundreds of short stories and poems and 10 volumes of handwritten journals. Through her work, she has introduced readers around the world to the places she loved and to a host of unforgettable characters. Her books—especially the Emily of New Moon series, which focuses on a young writer—have inspired many other aspiring writers, including some of today’s most successful novelists. How did Montgomery make artistic magic through her writing, and how does she continue to touch so many readers across time, place, and culture?
In the six lectures of The Life and Works of L. M. Montgomery, you’ll join Kate Scarth to delve into five key topics that illuminate the life, work, and legacy of the author sometimes called “the Jane Austen of Canada”: family, place, friendship, creativity, and literature. Through these lectures, you’ll explore the impact of Montgomery’s personal experience on her art and get a clearer picture of how life both shapes and is shaped by literature. You’ll examine why Montgomery’s novels mattered in her own time and better understand the lasting and international influence of her life and her work across the generations. And you’ll discover why readers still can’t get enough of Anne, Emily, Valancy, and, of course, Lucy Maud Montgomery herself.
I believe in open access scholarship. Because of this, since 2011 I have made A Pilgrim in Narnia free with nearly 1,000 posts on faith, fiction, and fantasy. Please consider sharing my work so others can enjoy it.
Long before the explosion of podcasting, I had fallen in love with audio lectures. Perhaps this habit began when I was taking Regent College classes by J.I. Packer, Rikk Watts, Iain Provan, and Eugene Peterson while housesitting in a log cabin on a Japanese mountainside. Listening to those tapes, CDs, and MP3 classes–it was an age of digital transition–taught me a skill that I’ve taught but haven’t really written about: pre-listening. When I finally made it to my grad school campus, I had developed the ability to find and listen to audio content that would prepare me for the material we were studying that term. Regent has a huge library of audio content going back decades, so I could find a lecture or a panel that helped me get the vocabulary and outlines of a lesson by immersion, so to speak.
Now in the streaming era, we are embarrassed by the riches of fine audio content. Since that time, I don’t know how many thousands of hours of podcasts, lectures, and entire courses I have enjoyed.
I have even played with the medium myself. I have developed video lecture-based courses on “The Fiction and Fantasy of C.S. Lewis” (The King’s College, New York), “C.S. Lewis and the Mythologies of Love and Sex” (Signum University), “World Religions” (Maritime Christian College), “Japanese Religion and Culture” (UPEI), and “Spirituality in the Writings of L.M. Montgomery” (Atlantic School of Theology). This last Montgomery project was an online Maymester course that AST offered as an inexpensive learning experience for their students, alumni, supporters, and other curious readers. More than 80 people signed up to learn about Montgomery and the Spiritual Life.
My YouTube channel has also been a place to play with content. In 2014, I did a series of shorts on “Why Religion Matters” live on location in various parts of the UK. I talked about the history of Monasticism from a monastery in Belgium and the Christian roots of the University in an Oxford library. Even then, I knew these were pretty amateur. However, sometimes people find these things helpful, like my “Christian History in One Hour: A Video Lecture,” which has been used in some church and school curricula.
In terms of being a public scholar, I am nearly ready to launch Season 3 of the MaudCast, where I host discussions about the life, works, and legacy of Lucy Maud Montgomery. I have used A Pilgrim in Narnia and my YouTube channel not just as a teaching tool, but for provocation (see “The Real Order to Read Narnia,” for example) and as a sandbox. When doing a conference presentation, I will sometimes practice and release my presentation (like here and here), or try to work out a concept inspired by classroom conversations, like my startling claim that “The Internet is Somewhere.”
What surprises me most about the response to my online teaching, though, is a lecture that has gained over 3,000 views: “A Grief Observed: A Talk on the Anniversary of My Parents’ Deaths, with C.S. Lewis.” It really is a lecture, with slides and pauses for sips of coffee and a super-long title. There are no dynamic YouTube design features. It’s just me talking. While I cannot usually tell how people are responding on the other side of the microphone, it is encouraging to see the comments and feedback about what has helped others.
Earlier this week, I began listening to a new “Great Course,” “The Life and Works of L.M. Montgomery” by Kate Scarth, which I purchased from Audible. As I was listening, I thought, “This is just too good to keep to myself.” The feeling grew inside of me as I heard about Sørina Higgins’ new course, “Myth & Meaning through the Wardrobe“–this just a couple of years after her own contribution to the Great Courses catalogue with “C.S. Lewis: Writer, Scholar, Seeker.” I want others to have the opportunities I have had to experience these dynamic modes of lifelong learning.
Thus, I am beginning The Super Great Courses Series on A Pilgrim in Narnia!
I will post some notes on some of my favourite courses and lecture series–not just the official “Great Courses” company ones, but everything I feel fits into my “Super Great Courses” experiences. Besides Kate Scarth’s new project, I would like to share about courses and lecture series by Dimitra Fimi, Harold Bloom, Willie James Jennings, Sørina Higgins, Raphael Shargel, Anne Curzan, Paul Fry, Michael Ward, Tom Shippey, John McWhorter, Bruce Hindmarsh, Verilyn Flieger, Jorge Luis Borges, Charles Taylor, Lyle Dorsett, Michael Drout, and (unsurprisingly) C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Don’t touch that dial!
I believe in open access scholarship. Because of this, since 2011 I have made A Pilgrim in Narnia free with nearly 1,000 posts on faith, fiction, and fantasy. Please consider sharing my work so others can enjoy it.
Hello, dear readers! My wife and I are escaping a beautiful but intensely hot high afternoon in a tourist cafe in the Land of Anne of Green Gables (Cavendish, PEI). We are camping on our Island’s magical North Shore (read about our place here), but we were baking in the shade. So now we are among the Island’s million visitors searching for some other magical things: namely, ice coffee, wifi, and air conditioning.
Here in this luxurious environment of overexcited, sunburned children, dreamily chatting seniors, and other pilgrims of local brew coffee, I wanted to take a moment to share some good news.
I am now in my 20th year of teaching at the University of Prince Edward Island (I talk a bit about it here and here). Over that time, I have taught 77 sections of 36 different courses at UPEI. Most often, I have taught Religious Studies or Applied Communication, Leadership, and Culture—as well as English, History, Philosophy, and Asian Studies. During this time, I have also taught and co-designed more than two dozen First-Year Experience courses, including 17 cohorts of UPEI 1020: Inquiry Studies, 10 sections of an experiment called “Global Issues,” and our brilliant UPEI 1030 program–a course designed to help students succeed in a university context.
After a rigorous competition, I am pleased to announce that I have begun an 11-month contract at UPEI. In this position, I am helping to lead our University Studies first-year experience program–both as a coordinator and a teacher in the classroom–and I am coordinating our Bachelor of Integrated Studies (a degree-completion program for mature students). I am excited about my new position–not just because I will get an office (not with AC but hopefully with wifi and coffee), but because I get to work more closely with the amazing UPEI 100 team, many of whom have spent years–and decades–helping our first-years find where they can fit at university. The previous coordinators have been superstars, so I hope I can carry on a bit of their energy and intentionality.
I may share more later, but as the baristas are cleaning up for closing time, I’ll just share the UPEI news brief this morning:
New Coordinator of Univ. 1000 and Bachelor of Integrated Studies
Dr. Brenton Dickieson has been appointed Coordinator of Univ. 1000 and Coordinator of the Bachelor of Integrated Studies. Brenton has taught extensively in ACLC, Asian Studies, Global Issues, Religious Studies, Univ. 1020: Inquiry Studies and various courses in the Univ. 1000 suite, including University Studies, and Leadership studies. He has won the Hessian Award for Teaching Excellence twice, and recently received a MacLauchlan Prize for Effective Writing by faculty.
In addition to his scholarly work, including a forthcoming book with Oxford University Press, Brenton hosts a popular blog, A Pilgrim in Narnia, and podcast, The MaudCast: The Podcast of the L. M. Montgomery Institute, now in its third season. He has previously taught at Signum University, where he has supervised eight MAs, and at The King’s College, NY, Maritime Christian College, and Regent Colllege, BC.
For a number of years, Brenton served as department and/or division lead in policy, research, and writing for the Post-Secondary Education division within the Government of PEI. In that capacity, he helped to produce PEI’s population growth strategy, private training school standards, and PEI’s international student strategy.
We welcome Brenton to his new role.
Dr. Brenton Dickieson, receiving an award from the Honourable Dr. Wade MacLaughlan,
President Emeritus of UPEI
I believe in open access scholarship. Because of this, since 2011 I have made A Pilgrim in Narnia free with nearly 1,000 posts on faith, fiction, and fantasy. Please consider sharing my work so others can enjoy it.
The Mythies are out! The Mythopoeic Society released its 2025 Awards shortlists earlier this year in five categories (three fiction and two scholarship awards). Award committee members read each of the books in their category and then vote on which works should receive the coveted Mythopoeic Award. Here are the results (with US Amazon links–but ensure you order from your local independent bookstore):
While a Hugo Award or a Grammy nod would probably help my career a bit more, the Mythopoeic Award is the one that I secretly want to win. By “secret,” I mean that I tell everyone I meet about my life’s dream to have that Aslan statue on my shelf with my other awards (like the Teacher of the Year awards, scholarship awards, and that 8th-place ribbon in Morris Dancing Mockery I won in Cheltenham some years back).
You will notice that the award winners are not all bestsellers. Some of the fiction is new to me, and the Myth and Fantasy Studies Award-winner was up against a master in the field (Jack Zipes), as well as a groundbreaking collection on speculative poetry, a popular book about epic fantasy, and a brilliant translation: Enheduanna: The Complete Poems of the World’s First Author by Sophus Helle (2023). These awards are different in the way they value the “mythopoeic” elements–the life-giving, all-encompassing mythmaking essence of their particular story or focus of study. It’s pretty great, honestly, and I look forward to reading the winners.
After the award voting had closed, I posted my thoughts on the category where I worked with all of the finalists: the Inklings Studies scholarship award. This year’s slate of finalists was entirely Tolkien-focussed—four monograph (single-book) studies and a manuscript study. From my peculiar perspective, you can read all about the finalists here:
Given how strong some of these monographs were, I was mildly surprised–but far from astonished–that the winner was the edited three-volume collection by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond, The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien(2024). I haven’t said a lot about these texts because I am working on a larger review (sort of a visual invitation to the series). I feel blessed to say that this beautifully designed and carefully edited 3-volume boxset has a treasured place on my shelf.
As entire volumes are dedicated to Tolkien’s poetic works, it is not an exhaustive collection. The selection seems to me wise, careful, and illustrative of Tolkien’s poetic life and work. I used the volume for a careful look at Tolkien’s WWI-era period, including his first forays into verse, his growth and development as a student, his artistic fellowship (the TCBS), and his lifelong editorial and revision habits.
The Collected Poems is, in my view, the most important Tolkien legendarium literary event since The Collected Letters, The History of Middle-earth, and The Nature of Middle-earth. Scull and Hammond have done us a tremendous service—and did it well.
For the full 2025 Mythopoeic Awards press release, see here. For more information about the Mythopoeic Awards, visit the Awards section of the Mythopoeic Society website. The Mythopoeic Society is made up of lovers of story. Some are professional scholars or writers, while most are avid readers who enjoy the community. Consider getting involved.
I believe in open access scholarship. Because of this, since 2011 I have made A Pilgrim in Narnia free with nearly 1,000 posts on faith, fiction, and fantasy. Please consider sharing my work so others can enjoy it.
