Matthew T. Dickerson is an American academic working as a professor of computer science at Middlebury College in Vermont.Faculty profile at Middlebury College, retrieved 2009-11-19. A scholar of J. R. R. Tolkien's literary work and the Inklings, Dickerson is by his own account a novelist, newspaper columnist, blues musician, historian of music, fly fisherman, maple sugar farmer, and beekeeper.
Education
Dickerson received an A.B. from Dartmouth College in 1985 and a Ph.D. in computer science from Cornell University, under the supervision of Dexter Kozen, in 1989.Dickerson's research web page at Middlebury College, retrieved 2009-11-18. His Ph.D. research was in symbolic computation, but since then he has worked primarily in computational geometry; his most frequently cited computer science papersAccording to a Google scholar search, 2009-11-19. concern k-nearest neighbors algorithm. and minimum-weight triangulation.. Dickerson has been on the Middlebury College faculty since receiving his Ph.D.Biography as an invited speaker at the 19th Annual Fall Workshop on Computational Geometry, Tufts University, 2009. Retrieved 2009-11-18.
Career From 1997 to 2001, Dickerson published a biweekly column on fishing and the outdoors in the Addison Independent, a local newspaper.Dickerson's Vermont fishing articles from his Middlebury College web site. Retrieved 2009-11-18. Since 2002, he has been the director of the New England Young Writers Conference,Biography as a featured speaker at the Fall 2009 Houghton College Writing Festival. Retrieved 2009-11-18. an annual four-day conference for high school students in Bread Loaf, Vermont, that is associated with Middlebury College. He is also the founding director of the Vermont Conference on Christianity and the Arts.About us , Vermont Conference on Christianity and the Arts. Retrieved 2009-11-18. He plays bass in a Vermont-based blues band, Deep Freyed.Deep Freyed Blues Band . Retrieved 2009-11-18.
Tolkien scholarship
Dickerson is the author of six non-technical books, most of them about fantasy fiction. His 2003 book Following Gandalf: Epic Battles and Moral Victory in The Lord of the Rings,Brazos Press, 2003, a study of the moral and Christian values expressed by Tolkien's works, highlights the contrasts between moral and physical victories, and between heroism and violence; it points out the necessity of having free will in order to make moral choices.Reviews of Following Gandalf: Review by David O'Hara (2004), Christianity Today; Review by Gregory S. Bucher (2004), Journal of Religion and Society; Review by Augustine J. Curley (2003), Library Journal; Review by Rudy Regehr (2006), Journal of Religion and Popular Culture. It was shortlisted for the Mythopoeic Society's 2004 and 2005 Mythopoeic Scholarship Awards.Past finalists for the Mythopoeic Scholarship Awards , from the web site of the Mythopoeic Society. Retrieved 2009-11-18. He has written a pair of books on Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and environmentalism, Ents, Elves, and Eriador: The Environmental Vision of J.R.R. Tolkienwith Jonathan Evans, University Press of Kentucky, 2006, Reviews of ''Ents, Elves, and Eriador: Review by Patrick Curry (2007), Tolkien Studies 4: 238–244, ; Review by Susan Palwick (2008), Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 15 (1): 266–268, . and Narnia and the Fields of Arbol: The Environmental Vision of C. S. Lewis.with David L. O'Hara, The University Press of Kentucky, 2009, Reviews of ''Narnia and the Fields of Arbol: Review by Charles C. Nash (2008), Library Journal; Jason Peters, The Natural in the Light of the Supernatural (2010), The Review of Politics; Elizabeth Blum, Review of Narnia and the Fields of Arbol (2010), Environmental History; Débora Maldonado-DeOliveira, Review of Narnia and the Fields of Arbol (2011), Rocky Mountain Review; Charles A. Huttar, Review of Narnia and the Fields of Arbol (2009), The C.S. Lewis Journal. Despite giving the first of these two books an overall negative review, reviewer Patrick Curry writes that it is "a major new contribution to the subject of Tolkien's work".
Other books His other books include The Finnsburg Encounter.Crossway Books, 1991, a work of historical fiction, translated into German as Licht uber Friesland,Verlag Schulte & Gerth, 1996, Hammers and Nails: The Life and Music of Mark Heard,Cornerstone Press, 2003, a biography of musician Mark Heard,Review of Hammers and Nails: Review by Chris Macintosh (2003), The Phantom Tollbooth. and From Homer to Harry Potter: A Handbook on Myth and Fantasy.with David L. O'Hara, Brazos Press, 2006, Review of From Homer to Harry Potter: Review by Gregory Hartley (2007), Christianity and Literature.
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