A university in the United Kingdom faced backlash over resurfaced reports about a course described as “decolonizing” the works of “Lord of the Rings” author J.R.R. Tolkien.
The course, reportedly offered in 2024 by assistant professor Onyeka Nubia at the University of Nottingham, was titled “Imagining ‘Britain’: Decolonising Tolkien et al” and sought to examine “the myths and legends of the ‘British’ isles as written about by twentieth-century authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien in ‘Lord of the Rings,’ ‘The Hobbit,’ and ‘The Silmarillion,’ and by C.S. Lewis in ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ Series.”
One of the aims of the course was “to explore British mythology and, where necessary, decolonise and repopulate the narrative of British mythmaking.”
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“Students will be encouraged to decolonise these myths, re-interpreting some as fantasies and others as an exoticisation of indigenous and foreign ethnic groups, gendered politics, cultural and religious otherness and ancient, medieval and early modern notions of chromatics,” the course description read.
A similar course taught by Nubia was also listed for the 2025–26 academic year, titled “Imagining Britain: Decolonising and Repopulating the Mythology of the British Isles.” The newer version removed Tolkien’s name from the title but kept a similar description, including continued analysis of the author’s works.
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According to The Telegraph, the course includes texts that accuse Tolkien’s work of “ethnic chauvinism” against orcs and other dark-skinned characters.
“It adds that Tolkien’s treatment of the fictional races shares in a tradition of ‘anti-African antipathy,’ in which people from Africa are painted as ‘the natural enemy of the white man,’” The Telegraph reported.
Nubia has reportedly argued “that eastern races in the fictional realm of Middle Earth are depicted as evil while fairer-skinned peoples of the West are shown as virtuous.”
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Fox News Digital reached out to the University of Nottingham and Nubia for comment but did not immediately receive responses.
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Tolkien’s work has come under fire in recent years for allegedly being a favorite of “far-right” extremists. In 2023, a U.K. government anti-terrorism unit known as Prevent’s Research Information and Communications Unit added Tolkien’s books to the list of potential triggers for right-wing extremism.
