Tolkien Seminar 2026 – Call for Papers [EN] & Scholarship

“I am home among the trees.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter “The Old Forest”)

Forests, rivers, mountains and meadows are much more than mere backdrops in Middle-earth: they are carriers of history, mythological significance and ethical orientation. At the same time, many stories in Tolkien’s oeuvre are marked by environmental destruction, industrialisation and the loss of ways of life close to nature – topics that are gaining new relevance in light of current ecological crises.

The 22^nd edition of the Tolkien Seminar is dedicated to the topic of “Environment, the World around us, and the Connatural World in Tolkien’s works”, because Tolkien always constructs ‘world’ as a multi-layered structure of ‘environment’, ‘the world around us’ and ‘connatural world’. His narrative structure and ethical orientation are based on an interplay of these dimensions: the environment calls for preservation, the ‘world around us’ calls for critical reflection on boundaries, and the ‘connatural world’ calls for solidarity and responsibility. This semantic differentiation not only allows for deeper insights into Tolkien’s narrative worlds, but also links them to contemporary discourses on ecology, community and transcendence.

Tolkien addresses ecological issues early on, particularly in his portrayal of nature and technology, for example in the contrast between the Ents and Saruman’s industry. In this light, ‘the world around us’ becomes a poetic admonition: the world is not just our surroundings, but our ‘fellow beings’. At the same time, the semantic differentiation highlights Tolkien’s philological thinking, in which the deconstruction and revitalisation of language functions as an act of cognition. Reflection on ‘the world around us’ and ‘connatural world’ can thus be understood as a Tolkienesque approach to the ethical, linguistic and ecological depth of his world-building.

The aim of this seminar is to bring together academic contributions from various disciplines that deal with questions of the relationship to nature, ecological ethics and the representation of the environment in Tolkien’s works. An interdisciplinary view of Tolkien can offer a holistic perspective on sustainability issues in their ecological, economic, social and cultural complexity. Both textual analyses and interdisciplinary approaches – for example from ecology, sociology, philosophy or media studies – are welcome.

The conference will take place at the Augsburg Environmental Education Centre, the central location for questions of sustainability, environmental issues and the future in Augsburg. The Environmental Education Centre is located on the edge of Augsburg’s city centre, but also borders one of the largest urban drinking water and nature reserves in Europe, thus enabling spatial proximity to complex questions about the ‘environment’ and ‘connatural world’.

Possible starting points for lectures could be:

• What surrounding, engulfing and separating significance do rivers, lakes and seas have in Tolkien’s mythology?
• How are they staged symbolically, narratively or geographically?
• To what extent can ideas of sustainable economic and living practices be recognised in Tolkien’s depiction of rural life, for example in the Shire?
• What ideals and warnings does the work convey with regard to the treatment of the natural environment?