Westmoot 2026’s theme is Hope and Eucatastrophe and we want your papers! Be sure to submit a proposal for our event in Minneapolis, May 22-24, 2026! www.tolkiensociety.org/events/westm...

Realized it’s been a while since I posted my Bronze Age Fellowship of the Ring so here the lads are again

Westmoot returns in 2026! Our new annual event - Westmoot - returns to Minneapolis on May 22-24. Bookings are now open, and we've kept the price the same as 2025 to help keep costs down. Look out for more info, including guests and more! Follow @westmoot.org www.tolkiensociety.org/events/westm...

A beautifully illuminated example of a #EYAMedieval document from our collection. This is a Psalter for Sacrum Use from the 14th century. #ExploreYourArchive #ExploreYourArchives #illuminatedmanuscripts

A note from our CEO Andy Hunter expressing our gratitude for our extended book family and stressing the importance of supporting independent bookstores this holiday season and beyond 💜

I quit the former Twitter two years ago this week, and I am here to tell you that my online life got a lot better for having left it. In two years I've not been tempted to go back, and I haven't felt any penalty in either career or community for not being there. It's nice to be here and not there.

We're super excited to share that "Queer Approaches to Tolkien" will be available in paperback on Nov 28th (less than 2 weeks from now!), and in digital format a few weeks afterwards. We can't wait to check this out!! robinareid.substack.com/p/queer-appr...

This clearly shouldn't be my first response, but I just find myself so remarkably annoyed not by the fact that my field is being co-opted by the worst people, but that it is being co-opted by the dumbest people, just the thickest, most arrogantly superficial 'trousered apes' imaginable.

look I know being an engaged citizen IS the work of democracy but it is also the work of elected officials not to create situations where everyone has to be mobilized all the time to prevent them from allowing some kind of Dickensian horror on a Sunday night while you're in between loads of laundry

Wondering why no one likes your posts anymore, even among your friends? It's because @jay.bsky.team and team have decided to hide a huge amount of content from all of our feeds by default. Here's how to turn it off. First go to the hamburger menu in the upper left corner

Respectfully, hell yeah.

Have been feeling sad so I reread Persuasion. Am not sure that was the right call. Now feeling sad and yearning. Also, the age gap between me and Anne Elliot is increasing rapidly lmao

...and less than 24 hours later Condé Nast has fired Lex and the rest of the Teen Vogue political desk, even as stories like this were bringing huge numbers of readers to the site

Our Call for Papers for the 2025 PPP Moot happening December 18-21 is here, as well as one for activities and entertainments! And if you’re wondering more about this event, check out our website for details, registration and more: theprancingponypodcast.com/moot/

Have you heard about The Bovadium Fragments, the new #Tolkien book published three weeks ago (and the last to be edited by Christopher Tolkien)? The Fragments are a satire on the impact of cars, and highlight again Tolkien's concern for the environment. www.tolkiensociety.org/2025/06/new-...

I believe people who misuse Tolkien to advance fascism should have a brief but life-changing encounter with World War II–era Christopher Lee

Let’s be real: approximately ten seconds after you told Tolkien that Catholics couldn’t go to Mass because they were afraid of being disappeared by agents of the government, he’d be out there protesting.

Tolkien, on the record, hated Nazis, hated Tyrants, hated Government Control & Surveillance, hated bullies, and especially hated bullies who enact violence on innocent people while trying to obfuscate that it's all about power.

If you need to explain to an idiot why Tolkien would have despised these goons, I have already grabbed a picture of the relevant passage (and I doubt I was the first):

Autumn views from the Blue Ridge Mountains this week. Couldn't have asked for better weather.

The Latin adj. “pulcher, pulchra, pulchrum” and the Ancient Greek adj. “καλός, καλός, καλή, καλόν” should just be translated as “beautiful”regardless of gender (I.e. don’t switch to “handsome” for masc. (or n.) nouns. The Grks and Romans used a single term; we shouldn’t code switch.

"as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of Musselmen [=Muslims]" between this and Washington's letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, the framers really went out of their way to say, "No, really, we mean to protect *all* religions."

Delighted to share that my (co-)edited volumes 'Tolkien and the Gothic' and 'The Romantic Spirit in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien' have been reviewed for the Journal of Inkling Studies! www.euppublishing.com/toc/ink/15/2

I've gone back and forth a lot on whether it's wise to take or share protest photos, but I got a lot of requests to take pictures of my sign this weekend, so I did end up taking one myself. I need a little thematic levity to maintain the last vestiges of my sanity right now.

I have yeeted the LMS my uni has paid for and which you were probably thinking helps you teach Forgive me it was surveillant so mid and so broke

Some good thinking that looks beyond the optics and frames the past weekend a bit outside of what I have seen elsewhere. democracyamericana.com/posts/a40ac6...

Hey, quick question: what the fuck?

Lotta folks here at No Kings, Orange County NC. Lots of American flags, a fellow in an inflatable dino costume asking everyone if they've read the Declaration of Independence and handing out copies. No kings in North Carolina.

Me:

If you think that professors exist as repositories of knowledge that students ask for answers, you’re missing the entire point of a college education. We’re here to teach students how to do research, how to analyze and argue, how to think for themselves — how to find the answers on their own.

I've identified the manuscript #Tolkien used for his landmark 1939 lecture On Fairy-stories – previously thought lost. See my featured article, available online, in the latest issue of the Journal of Inklings Studies! www.euppublishing.com/journal/ink

Still trying to figure out the correct ratio of "avoiding social media for my own well-being" and "not disconnecting from the parts of the internet that keep me informed about the world".

Anyone who knows me knows that I get angry whenever anyone calls Tolkien a Victorian author (weirdly common!). So it's been hilarious going through primary source student accounts of the 1910s-1920s where they're consistently are like UGH THE VICTORIANS OF YORE, WE ARE NOT THEM, THANKFULLY.

While I was in the middle of England this summer I met up with George & recorded an episode of the ADHD BCE podcast, where I discuss how studying the emperor Julian resonates with my own experiences living with ADHD, whether or not Julian can be retroactively diagnosed as such.

Today’s Heavy Metal Music & the Premodern World class discussed Deena Weinstein’s notion of metal as a ditheism of Chaos & Dionysus, then introduced power & symphonic metal, then reception theory, with a case study of the Siren episode between Homer, ancient & modern painters, & Symphony X.

There will be many casualties from UChicago ending ('pausing') PhD admissions in Humantities, but one which I am keenly aware of: this is close to a death sentence for teaching cuneiform in the United States (esp. Sumerian, Hittite, Elamite, Eblaite, Luwian) and it will affect the whole world.

It's gotcha day for this strapping young lad who has somehow been living with me for 8 years now. My soulmate cat. Woke up this morning to him curling up with me and purring himself to sleep 😭🐈‍⬛💚

Frodo at the end of LotR

I wrote a book for your mom! And for your UU minister! And for your neighbor! Get virtually anyone to leave you alone about being a witch! Let me deal with them! I use my most professional soothing voice! #witchsky bookshop.org/p/books/witc...

I haven't seen this since it came out, which was before I read the Carpenter bio or Letters. I'm looking forward to seeing it again as a moderately better-informed person 🤓

You are cordially invited to our Anti-Prime Sale, where every purchase will financially support bookstores, NOT billionaires 🥳

We're running a Love Your Indie Sale all month, with 2,000+ audiobooks—because we really, really do love your indie. And every purchase supports them, helping their small business and your community. ⁠ You don't have to be a member to shop the sale, but members do take an additional 30% off 👀

The thing is, by refusing to truly engage with the public and to support/value scholars who do, we cede the public understanding of history to these 'history buffs,' - and at the same time, contribute to the decline of our field, as the public doesn't know what we *do* that they should pay for.

Every time you say “fuck the south and red states they deserve all the pain they’re getting” you’re literally abandoning all the marginalized voters you pretend to care about when you act all concerned about gerrymandering and voter suppression. Marginalized people exist everywhere.

As if simply *being* in Orlando in July wasn't bad enough, the weather (vaguely gross and stormy) keeps delaying my flight home over and over again, even when we were finally in the middle of boarding. My work obligations are finished, I haven't slept, let me go hoooome

How’s your day going? Mine’s going great because I got to do show & tell again, presenting this wonderfully handcoloured copy of the Biblia sacra, printed by Christophe Plantin in 1583! #earlymodern #bookhistory #rarebooks 💙📚📜

I have my fingers crossed for the One Ring (not least because I already own it and multiple expansions and want to get some use out of them 😅)

Need to share this again while it’s still pride month #Tolkien #art

Starting next week is the online course 'Tolkien and his Medieval Sources' with live classes each Thursday for six weeks. Get the details and sign up at medievalstudies.thinkific.com/courses/tolk... #Tolkien