This four-course series is part of the Academic Mastery program. Please apply to the AM program before enrolling in Tolkien's Middle-earth in Context modules.

These four short, linked courses invite students to explore how Tolkien’s imagination came to create the world of Middle-earth. We will closely examine his scholarly work and his fiction in order to see the development of his thoughts on myth, fairy stories, and the elegy. Students will also review and practice skills that are critical to humanities studies, such as literary analysis and reading texts through critical lenses. These modules can be taken in any sequence and may be repeated as many times as desired to help students develop confidence and achieve mastery.

Note: Modules in this series draw extensively upon lectures originally recorded for Tolkien's World of Middle-earth. Students in the MA program who have taken (or plan to take) that course may find significant overlap in the core materials.