Dr. Amy H. Sturgis will be giving the keynote address (“Pushing the Boundaries of English Studies: From Middle-earth to Hogwarts”) at this year’s English Studies Symposium at Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville, Tennessee on March 21, 2009. The event will include a full day of presentations made by graduate students and faculty from universities all over the Southeast. There is a fee to attend, but there’s also a fully catered deli lunch at no extra cost. If you’re in/near the area, please join us! More information is available here.

When director Peter Jackson asked Howard Shore to compose the score for “The Lord of the Rings” film trilogy, Shore studied J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy world before beginning four years of writing music. At a Master’s Tea Tuesday afternoon, Shore shared insights about composing, orchestrating, conducting and producing more than ten hours of music to accompany “The Lord of the Rings” films in front of more than 100 students in the Branford College common room. The Academy Award-winning composer, who also wrote the scores for “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “Doubt,” among others, also told stories about working on other genres of music before his venture into cinema. Shore began the talk by describing his first encounters with music. From the beginning, his clarinet teacher felt it was important that he learn music composition techniques such as harmony and counterpoint, he said. By the time Shore was 11 years old, he was already writing small pieces. Shore shares insights on ‘Rings’ trilogy

vtboyarc writes: I am a student at Benedictine College in Kansas, I got this email today, and it is also posted on the college website. Here it is: “Benedictine College will host a special presentation on the famous Inklings English literary group of the early 1900s on Monday, Feb. 23. Mark Colin Havard will deliver his presentation, The Lewis and Tolkien I Knew: Memories of an Inklings Son, beginning at 7:30 p.m. in the OMalley-McAllister Auditorium on the college campus. The event, sponsored by the English and Theology Departments, is free and open to the public. Continue reading “Inklings Talk at Benedictine College”

Lance Owens sends along word that the lecture ‘J.R.R. Tolkien: An Imaginative Life’ is now available online: A series of three lectures examining Tolkien and his imaginative experience is now becoming available online in audio and illustrated format. The lecture series runs from February 10 to March 17, 2009 at Westminster College in Salt Lake City. As the series is completed, all lectures will be made available for online listening and viewing. The first lecture is now available here. For more information visit gnosis.org/tolkien Continue reading “‘J.R.R. Tolkien: An Imaginative Life’ Lecture Online”

J.R.R. Tolkien scholar Douglas A. Anderson will present “Annotating The Hobbit & Other Adventures” at Bradley University’s Neumiller Chapel in Bradley Hall at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 17, in Peoria, Illinois. Anderson is the award-winning author and editor of The Annotated Hobbit, Tales Before Tolkien, Tales Before Narnia, Seekers of Dreams, and, with Verlyn Flieger, an expanded critical edition of Tolkien’s On Fairy-stories. He is also an editor of the academic journal Tolkien Studies.

Bradley adjunct and former Illinois Central College English professor Mike Foster will be the moderator of the free lecture. Foster has been the North American representative of the Tolkien Society since 1995. From 1974 until his retirement in 2005, he taught a literature course on Tolkien and another on fantasy literature at Illinois Central College. In 2006 and 2008, he taught an upper-division version of that class at Bradley University. The lecture is sponsored by the Cullom-Davis Library Speakers Committee in conjunction with The Friends of the Library Committee. Read More

Mike Foster writes: J.R.R. Tolkien scholar Douglas A. Anderson will present “Annotating The Hobbit & Other Adventures” at Bradley University’s Neumiller Chapel in Bradley Hall at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 17, in Peoria, Illinois. Bradley adjunct English professor Mike Foster will be the moderator of the free lecture. Anderson is the award-winning author and editor of The Annotated Hobbit, Tales Before Tolkien, Tales Before Narnia. Seekers of Dreams, and, with Verlyn Flieger, an expanded critical edition of Tolkien’s On Fairy-stories. He is also an editor of the academic journal Tolkien Studies. Foster has been the North American representative of the Tolkien Society since 1995. From 1974 until his retirement in 2005, he taught a literature course on Tolkien at Illinois Central College. In 2006 and 2008, he taught an upper-division version of that class at Bradley University.