Tuesday AM   

This will be the third of three courses on Tolkien’s novel The Lord of the Rings and will focus on The Return of the King. This is a masterwork, and Richard is prepared to build the case from a literary perspective and also to share how Tolkien drew from other great myths of the world: Celtic, Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Finnish, Greek, and Indian. His goal was to create a myth for his “northern” people, and he did so borrowing from many other traditions. This is not unlike what “Homer” and other great writers of the past did with their great myths. This will be a page-by-page examination, like you might experience in graduate school. (It is essential that students have the same edition as the instructor. See below) New remote course. Format includes lecture and discussion.

REQUIRED BOOK: The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien, ISBN 9780547928197 (pbk.), Mariner Books

Harry S. Truman once described the presidency as “the most peculiar office in the world.” In this course, we will explore how the Founding Fathers left the office for future presidents to define, creating conditions for a dramatic expansion of executive power. We will examine how the presidency has come to dominate the three co-equal branches, with Congress and the Supreme Court at times ceding authority. We will consider how and why this shift occurred, how This peculiar office is won or lost, how they have exercised power, and how the rise of the administrative state has reshaped the balance envisioned by the framers.