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Carolina Moot 2026: The Salt of Middle-earth: Minor Characters Who Season the Tale
Drury Inn & Suites Charlotte Northlake, Charlotte, NC, USA
November 7, 2026
Aragorn had a reforged sword. Gandalf had a ring of fire. But Barliman Butterbur had a bad memory and a good heart, and that’s enough to change the course of history. This year’s Carolina Moot celebrates the minor characters in Tolkien’s legendarium. The smaller voices, the one‑scene wonders, and the quieter souls of Middle-earth: characters who carry no rings, speak no prophecies, and wield no legendary blades, yet without them the story would taste of nothing.
Possible ideas for proposals might include:
- A study on your favorite minor character from The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and The History of Middle-earth.
- Creative submissions: a monologue from Bill the Pony, a letter from Ioreth, a song of the nameless Rohirrim
- Discussing what narrative work minor characters perform (comic relief, local knowledge, moral grounding)
- How minor characters reflect Tolkien’s views on ordinary life, community, or the dignity of labor
- Why readers so often remember a character who appears only a few times
The great tales are not woven by kings and warriors alone. They are seasoned by the farmer who lends a hand, the pony who carries the load, and the old woman who keeps talking long enough to jog people’s memories. We welcome proposals that give these characters the spotlight they deserve.
Motown Moot 2026: Tolkien and the Modern Age
Schoolcraft College, Livonia ,MI, USA
December 12, 2026
While J.R.R. Tolkien is often celebrated as a sub-creator of ancient mythologies and a chronicler of a lost heroic past, his profound and complex relationship with the Modern Age demands fresh exploration. Motown Moot seeks to investigate the dynamic interplay between Tolkien’s legendarium and the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We invite presentations that look at, and beyond, the view of Tolkien as a critic of modernity, and examine how his work engages with, critiques, and even unexpectedly illuminates modern, contemporary concerns.
Potential topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Tolkien’s response to the trauma of industrial warfare and technological acceleration
- Eco-critical readings of his works in an age of climate crisis
- The modern applicability of Tolkien’s themes of community, stewardship, and resistance
- Post-modern and adaptive readings of Tolkien’s texts
- The relevance of Tolkien’s concepts of eucatastrophe, estel, and amdir in an anxious world
Come join us in Detroit with one foot in the distant past and the other in the present.
Kiwi Moot 2027: Stars and Signs
Courtenay Creative, Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand
February 6-8, 2027
In the firmament of J.R.R. Tolkien’s imagination, the stars are more than distant suns. They are the first light of creation, the high beauty kindled by Varda Elentári, and a beacon of untainted hope in a world shadowed by decline. Kiwi Moot invites fans and scholars from around the world to explore the dual role of celestial and symbolic guidance in Tolkien’s legendarium: the profound tension between the stars as objective, guiding truths and the signs as subjective, sometime coercive, instruments of power.
Where the stars offer a steady, untouchable light that leads the Elves to awakening and rightful Kings to their hidden crowns, the forces of the Enemy craft a darker semiotics. From the brooding Red Eye of Sauron to the stark White Hand of Saruman, these signs are tools of domination and despair, meticulously designed to make evil feel inevitable. They are the iconography of a manufactured reality, a propaganda of inevitability that seeks to overwrite the world’s original beauty. Kiwi Moot will delve into this dichotomy, examining how Tolkien uses these motifs to explore the nature of truth, the burden of choice, and the power of perception in a fallen world.
We encourage submissions that navigate these themes, considering (but not limited to):
- Cosmic Guidance: Prophecy and foresight, the role of astronomy and starlight in narrative, and the concept of eucatastrophe as a guiding light in the dark.
- Mortal Choice: The intricate dance between fate and free will, the ethics of decision-making, and the process of losing and finding one’s way, both physically and spiritually.
- The Language of Power: Heraldry, symbols, and alphabets as markers of identity, lineage, or domination; the semiotics of evil and its psychological impact.
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Creation and Cartography: The art of mythmaking and storytelling itself, maps and mapmaking as both practical guides and records of perilous journeys, and the alphabets that preserve the words of hope and warning.
Furthermore, in a city synonymous with the cinematic realization of Middle-earth, “Stars and Signs” also winks at the role of film and adaptation. We invite reflections on the “stars” of Peter Jackson’s trilogies, shot in the breathtaking landscapes of Aotearoa New Zealand, and how these adaptations become new “signs” for Tolkien’s world in the modern consciousness. How do subsequent adaptations reinterpret the guiding lights and dark omens of the books? What new meanings emerge when these stories are translated to the screen and beyond?
Set in Wellington, the very heart of “Middle-earth,” Kiwi Moot promises to be a unique gathering where the light of scholarship meets the landscapes that brought the myths to life. We invite you to join us in tracing the constellations of meaning that guide us through Tolkien’s enduring masterpiece.
For a full list of all our confirmed Signum Regional Moots, click this link here.
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