Explore The Lord of the Rings – On Location!

On January 3, 2017, Professor Tolkien’s 125th birthday, Signum University is launching a major and innovative new program called “Exploring The Lord of the Rings.”, Signum founder and president Corey Olsen, The Tolkien Professor, will teach a detailed, chapter-by-chapter course on The Lord of the Rings…in Middle-Earth.

The course will take place on LOTRO on Tuesday evenings, 9:30 PM Eastern Time. In a Lore Hall provided by the Standing Stone developers especially for this course (direction are here), Corey, as Narnion the Loremaster of Gondor, will spend about an hour and a half discussing the book chapter and its themes, reading passages and doing some close reading so that participants can really get into the story as it unfolds.

For the final portion of the class, in-game participants will take a “field trip” to visit the places connected with the part of the book just discussed to examine both the visual adaptation and the related quests and story lines. “In the end,” said Corey, “we will be studying The Lord of the Rings and also thinking about the adaptation of the story that the Standing Stone folks have done, which in my opinion is brilliant.”

A discussion board with information about the course, a place to post questions for Narnion, and forums for participant interaction supports the course, and all are welcome to come join the conversation.

Participants do not need to be in LOTRO (or even play at all) to attend or participate in discussions. Each class will be broadcast on the SignumU Twitch channel, and discussion will be highly interactive. Everyone attending, whether in game or not, will be able to participate in the discussion. For those whose schedules or time zones make this inconvenient, recordings of the classes will be posted promptly on the Signum University YouTube channel and on the Signum University iTunesU feed.

So, if you’ve ever wanted to study The Lord of the Rings in depth and are interested in taking a long, detailed and fun journey of lore, join Corey at the Landroval Lore Hall in Bree (the class will take place on other servers in rotation) or on twitch.tv/signumu at 9:30 PM EST on January 3.