Professor Michael D.C. Drout,

Director of the Center for the Study of the Medieval,

Wheaton College,

Norton, MA

A specialist in both medieval literature and fantasy, Professor Drout received his Ph.D. from Loyola University in 1997. He also holds M.A. degrees from Stanford (journalism) and the University of Missouri-Columbia (English literature) and a B.A. from Carnegie Mellon. Professor Drout was awarded Wheaton’s Faculty Appreciation Award (2002) and Prentice Professorship (2003-2008) for his teaching and has been a Millicent C. McIntosh Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Institute. He is the editor of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Beowulf and the Critics (which won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies for 2003), and the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2007), and is co-editor and co-founder of the journal Tolkien Studies. His books include How Tradition Works: A Meme-Based Poetics of the Anglo-Saxon Tenth Century (2006), Drout’s Quick and Easy Old English (2012), and Tradition and Influence in Anglo-Saxon Literature (2013). A new book on Tolkien, The Tower and the Ruin: J.R.R. Tolkien’s World, has just been completed. His current research includes work on computer-assisted statistical analysis of texts that has been supported by two grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Drout has recorded 11 books for Recorded Books’ Modern Scholar series, including A Way With Words IV: Understanding Poetry, which was a finalist for a 2010 Audie Award. Drout has previously led the Anglo-Saxon Britain sojourn for Scholarly Sojourns, and has lectured in England, Ireland, Italy, Finland, Norway, Canada and throughout the United States. His website is http://michaeldrout.com.