are there any published essays on asoiaf you would recommend?
“Beyond the Pale? Craster and the Pathological Reproduction of Houses in Westeros” by D. Marcel DeCoste, in Mastering the Game of Thrones: Essays on George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (eds. Jes Bettis and Susan Johnston)
“Bringing Elsewhere Home: A Song of Ice and Fire’s Ethics of Disability” by Pascal J. Massie and Lauryn S. Mayer, in Studies in Medievalism XXIII: Ethics and Medievalism (ed. Karl Fugelso)
“High and Mighty Queens of Westeros” by Kavita Mudan Finn, “Setting up Westeros: The Medievalesque World of Game of Thrones” by Gillian Polack, “Barbarian Colonizers and Postcolonialism in Westeros and Britain” by Shiloh Carroll in Game of Thrones versus History: Written in Blood (ed. Brian A. Pavlac)
“Power and Feminism in Westeros” by Caroline Spector, “Back to the Egg: The Prequels to A Song of Ice and Fire” by Gary Westfahl, “An Unreliable World: History and Timekeeping in Westeros” by Adam Whitehead in Beyond the Wall: Exploring George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (ed. James Lowder)
“Westerosi Queens: Medievalist Portrayal of Female Power and Authority in A Song of Ice and Fire” by Sylwia Borowska-Szerszun, in Queenship and the Women of Westeros: Female Agency and Advice in Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire (eds. Zita Eva Rohr and Lisa Benz)
Additionally, here are some essays and books that aren’t about the series specifically but which I’ve found applicable to it:
“Olalla’s Legacy: Twentieth-Century Vampire Fiction and Genetic Previvorship” by Sara Wasson (on gothic horror deriving from one’s own genetics)
Gothic Incest: Gender, Sexuality and Transgression by Jenny DiPlacidi
“Doubling and Incest in the Mabinogi” by Andrew Welsh
The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare by Helen Cooper
“When a Knight meets a Dragon Maiden: Human Identity and the Monstrous Animal Other” by Lydia Zeldenrust, “Angela Carter’s ‘Unicorn’ and the Illusion of Empowerment Through Objectification” by Janey Tracey, Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers: Monstrosity, Patriarchy, and the Fear of Female Power by Jude Ellison S. Doyle (Dany studies)
“The Armour of an Alienating Identity” by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and the members of Interscripta, “Britomart’s Armor in Spenser’s ‘Faerie Queene’: Reopening Cultural Matters of Gender and Figuration” by Judith H. Anderson, “Maiden Warriors and Other Sons” by Carol J. Clover, “Menaced Masculinity and Imperiled Virginity in the Morte Darthur” and “Malory’s Multiple Virgins” by Kathleen Coyne Kelly, Studies in the Fairy Mythology of Arthurian Romance by Lucy Allen Paton (Jaime and Brienne studies)
“Isn’t It Romantic? Angela Carter’s Bloody Revision of the Romantic Aesthetic in ‘The Erl-King’” by Harriet Kramer Linkin (Sansa studies)
“Regardless of Sex: Men, Women, and Power in Early Northern Europe” by Carol J. Clover (Ironborn studies)