In August 2014 I was honoured to travel to the beautiful University of Oxford in England and present my research at The George MacDonald Society 2014 conference, ‘Re-Imagining the Inklings: the Victorian Roots of Modern Fantasy’. I was particularly excited to present at this conference, since it was so closely aligned with the topic of my own research, and the PhD thesis I had only recently completed the year before. The final chapter of that thesis looks at George MacDonald and Lewis Carroll (among other writers), and the ways that their writing engages with Victorian concepts of dreams, alternative states of consciousness, the supernatural, and early ideas of higher-dimensional space. When offered, I jumped at the chance to present these ideas not only among such expert scholars on George MacDonald and Victorian Fantasy, but also at Oxford – that ancient city of literary dreaming, and the home of many of the world’s most beloved authors, including Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland) and the Inklings J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings) and C. S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia). (more…)