The Mythopoeic Society's Seminar Proceedings Series begins with this volume of papers originally presented at the Society's Online Midwinter Seminar 3 held February 17-18, 2024. Online Midwinter Seminar 2024: "Something Mighty Queer" features centered around queerness in fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction, or other mythopoeic work. As these papers indicate, "Queerness" is an intentionally ambiguous term, demonstrating the diversity of queer experiences and the necessity of situating queerness as a liminal, complex paradigm. Through explorations of diverse topics, these conference papers prove queer theory is wider than the study of gender identity or sexuality, extending to take positions against normativity and dominant modes of thought and engaging with the indefinite.
The Mythopoeic Society's online seminar series started during the COVID pandemic and has since become a popular part of our annual programming. Several papers from the first seminar, "The Inklings and Horror," were published in various issues of Mythlore, and the second seminar, "Fantasy Goes to Hell," resulted in a special issue of Mythlore (#144). The dedicated Seminar Proceedings Series begins with OMS 3: "Something Mighty Queer."
The Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings Series is designed to collect as many papers as possible from these focused, single-topic online seminars. All presenters are encouraged (but not required) to submit the presentation version of their work. Transcripts of panel discussions may also be included. These submissions are not peer-reviewed, and there is only minimal editing to align them with our house style. Authors retain copyright of their papers under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, and may submit expanded versions to Mythlore or elsewhere at a later date for peer review and more formal publication.
