NEWS Learning Runes at the U.
Peggy
Talking Tolkien
Class based on 'Lord of the Rings' languages helps give a weighty college
subject more pop
01/26/2003
By LINDA K. WERTHEIMER / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – The University of Texas students scribbled their names in a strange
language. The A's looked like F's, the P's resembled gibberish.
They were in their second day of learning Old English runes, the writing
system used by author J.R.R. Tolkien to invent the languages Elvish, Orcish
and Dwarvish for The Lord of the Rings.
At UT, the tongues revived by the hit film trilogy are being used to teach
the millennial generation this semester. Already, students are raving about
the new course, titled "The Linguistics of Tolkien's Middle Earth." Both
sections of the class are full, and hundreds of students are on waiting
lists to get in.
"So far, I love it. I like the visual, seeing the runes on the board," said
Elizabeth Nelson, a 19-year-old UT senior who has three fairy tattoos. A
tattoo of the Lady Galadriel is on her midriff. "I like being able to say
that I know how to write my name in runes. Lots of my friends are jealous."
UT isn't alone in jumping on the Tolkien bandwagon. This fall, three
Dallas-area universities will team up to teach a literature class about the
trilogy for students from the University of Dallas in Irving, Southern
Methodist University and the University of Texas at Dallas.
The trend isn't new. For at least two decades, some professors have taught
popular culture classes about film and TV shows and at times faced ridicule
from colleagues. The difference now is that more professors are unabashedly
linking movies and books their students adore with traditional, often
weighty subjects, from physics to philosophy. Pop culture is no longer
viewed as a nonsensical subject.
The idea of connecting traditional classes and popular culture grew rapidly
the last five years, said Robert Thompson, a Syracuse University professor
of media and popular culture. Textbooks such as The Simpsons and Philosophy:
The D'oh! of Homer and Seinfeld and Philosophy: A Book about Everything and
Nothing helped move the trend along, he said.
"College students know an enormous amount about television, about popular
music," Dr. Thompson said. "If we can use that knowledge to invite them into
other kinds of work, it'd be silly not to."
But professors can't simply show film clips and play sound bites of popular
music.
"If you're trying to teach Plato using Seinfeld and Simpson, that's a fine
thing to do," he said. "But if you never get around to reading Plato, you've
failed."
At Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, N.Y., students have been
able to sign up for "Beam me up, Einstein: Physics through Star Trek" since
1997. Don Spector teaches the course every other year for nonscience majors.
Dr. Spector shows bits of Star Trek episodes based on whether there's a
physics principle he can teach. Students, for example, watch a clip about a
cloaking device. (Translation for nongeeks: a gadget that renders objects,
typically spaceships, invisible and undetectable.) Then the class talks
about what principles could be used to create the device.
"I have fun with it. I like teaching in this way better probably because
they are more engaged with it," Dr. Spector said. "Physics always has this
reputation of being so hard and so out there. It helps the physics to bring
something that's so accessible."
Lyrical literature
David Gaines, chairman of the English department at Southwestern University
in Georgetown, Texas, teaches a literature class based on Bob Dylan.
"It's not, 'Let's just listen to "Tangled Up in Blue" 70 times and go home
and listen to it more,' " Dr. Gaines said. "It's a way to engage students
with materials they're interested in and urge them to take that a little
further."
Using the work of Tolkien as the focus for linguistics makes perfect sense,
he said. The students think critically about a book they have read for
pleasure in the past.
The three Dallas-area schools teaming up for the class this fall will link
the Tolkien trilogy to religion, medieval philosophy and other areas, said
Dennis Kratz, a UTD professor and dean who will help teach the course.
"What's really happening today is the old notions of pop culture and high
culture, except for the extremes, have blurred," Dr. Kratz said. "When you
redo La Bohéme as Rent, is that high culture or middle-brow culture?"
The Lord of the Rings is a bit of both, he said.
"I just think it's such a very deep, satisfying, intellectually pleasing
work of literature, and yet it's fun," Dr. Kratz said.
UT instructor Fred Hoyt, a graduate student, created the Tolkien course to
meet a requirement that he create an introductory linguistics class. Both
sections of his classes, one with 30 students, one with 70, filled
immediately; he would have been able to fill each class 10 times over, based
on waiting lists.
Linguistics link
Mr. Hoyt said there's a logical connection between the famous author and
linguistics. Mr. Tolkien was a linguist before he was a novelist. One of the
required texts in the new UT class is The Languages of Tolkien's Middle
Earth, another author's interpretation of the invented tongues. Mr. Tolkien
based the languages on Old Norse, Old English, Gothic, Welsh and Finnish.
Mr. Hoyt, like many of his students, began reading the author's books as a
child. He said the work gave him a love for new languages, though he didn't
know about linguistics at the time.
"Part of the reason I wanted to offer this course was when I was an
undergraduate, I wish I had known about linguistics," he said. "In my
department, there's more focus on teaching. Linguistics is hard. It's more
like we're realizing we always could've gotten to more people."
His hope is that some students will want to study the discipline after
taking his class.
"It's not about the movies. The stuff we're interested in is the stuff left
out in the movies," he said.
Students must read The Lord of the Rings and familiarize themselves with the
appendix that explains the development of the languages. They'll study Old
English runes, but they'll also learn Angerthas Daeron, the Elvish runes
that Mr. Tolkien created, and Angerthas Moria, the Dwarvish runes.
They'll talk about how Elvish sounds melodic and the Black Speech in the
trilogy sounds harsh.
"The good guys in his book speak beautiful languages, and the bad guys speak
ugly languages," Mr. Hoyt said.
Students said professors are right to find ways to connect teaching to
students' lives.
"If it's interesting and relevant, you'll learn it better," said Alex
Hancock, a junior.
Professors, even when they include popular film or books, are careful to
teach in depth, said UT senior Travis Lara.
"It's not more bells and whistles," he said. "It's more involvement with
students."
Eric Lee, an engineering major, never intended to study linguistics until he
saw "Middle Earth" in the course title.
"I saw it advertised on the front page of the UT Web site," Mr. Lee said. "I
was like, 'Cool. I have to take this class.' "
E-mail lwertheimer@...
DallasNews.com
The Archives
Class based on 'Lord of the Rings' languages helps give a weighty college
subject more pop
01/26/2003
By LINDA K. WERTHEIMER / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – The University of Texas students scribbled their names in a strange
language. The A's looked like F's, the P's resembled gibberish.
They were in their second day of learning Old English runes, the writing
system used by author J.R.R. Tolkien to invent the languages Elvish, Orcish
and Dwarvish for The Lord of the Rings.
At UT, the tongues revived by the hit film trilogy are being used to teach
the millennial generation this semester. Already, students are raving about
the new course, titled "The Linguistics of Tolkien's Middle Earth." Both
sections of the class are full, and hundreds of students are on waiting
lists to get in.
"So far, I love it. I like the visual, seeing the runes on the board," said
Elizabeth Nelson, a 19-year-old UT senior who has three fairy tattoos. A
tattoo of the Lady Galadriel is on her midriff. "I like being able to say
that I know how to write my name in runes. Lots of my friends are jealous."
UT isn't alone in jumping on the Tolkien bandwagon. This fall, three
Dallas-area universities will team up to teach a literature class about the
trilogy for students from the University of Dallas in Irving, Southern
Methodist University and the University of Texas at Dallas.
The trend isn't new. For at least two decades, some professors have taught
popular culture classes about film and TV shows and at times faced ridicule
from colleagues. The difference now is that more professors are unabashedly
linking movies and books their students adore with traditional, often
weighty subjects, from physics to philosophy. Pop culture is no longer
viewed as a nonsensical subject.
The idea of connecting traditional classes and popular culture grew rapidly
the last five years, said Robert Thompson, a Syracuse University professor
of media and popular culture. Textbooks such as The Simpsons and Philosophy:
The D'oh! of Homer and Seinfeld and Philosophy: A Book about Everything and
Nothing helped move the trend along, he said.
"College students know an enormous amount about television, about popular
music," Dr. Thompson said. "If we can use that knowledge to invite them into
other kinds of work, it'd be silly not to."
But professors can't simply show film clips and play sound bites of popular
music.
"If you're trying to teach Plato using Seinfeld and Simpson, that's a fine
thing to do," he said. "But if you never get around to reading Plato, you've
failed."
At Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, N.Y., students have been
able to sign up for "Beam me up, Einstein: Physics through Star Trek" since
1997. Don Spector teaches the course every other year for nonscience majors.
Dr. Spector shows bits of Star Trek episodes based on whether there's a
physics principle he can teach. Students, for example, watch a clip about a
cloaking device. (Translation for nongeeks: a gadget that renders objects,
typically spaceships, invisible and undetectable.) Then the class talks
about what principles could be used to create the device.
"I have fun with it. I like teaching in this way better probably because
they are more engaged with it," Dr. Spector said. "Physics always has this
reputation of being so hard and so out there. It helps the physics to bring
something that's so accessible."
Lyrical literature
David Gaines, chairman of the English department at Southwestern University
in Georgetown, Texas, teaches a literature class based on Bob Dylan.
"It's not, 'Let's just listen to "Tangled Up in Blue" 70 times and go home
and listen to it more,' " Dr. Gaines said. "It's a way to engage students
with materials they're interested in and urge them to take that a little
further."
Using the work of Tolkien as the focus for linguistics makes perfect sense,
he said. The students think critically about a book they have read for
pleasure in the past.
The three Dallas-area schools teaming up for the class this fall will link
the Tolkien trilogy to religion, medieval philosophy and other areas, said
Dennis Kratz, a UTD professor and dean who will help teach the course.
"What's really happening today is the old notions of pop culture and high
culture, except for the extremes, have blurred," Dr. Kratz said. "When you
redo La Bohéme as Rent, is that high culture or middle-brow culture?"
The Lord of the Rings is a bit of both, he said.
"I just think it's such a very deep, satisfying, intellectually pleasing
work of literature, and yet it's fun," Dr. Kratz said.
UT instructor Fred Hoyt, a graduate student, created the Tolkien course to
meet a requirement that he create an introductory linguistics class. Both
sections of his classes, one with 30 students, one with 70, filled
immediately; he would have been able to fill each class 10 times over, based
on waiting lists.
Linguistics link
Mr. Hoyt said there's a logical connection between the famous author and
linguistics. Mr. Tolkien was a linguist before he was a novelist. One of the
required texts in the new UT class is The Languages of Tolkien's Middle
Earth, another author's interpretation of the invented tongues. Mr. Tolkien
based the languages on Old Norse, Old English, Gothic, Welsh and Finnish.
Mr. Hoyt, like many of his students, began reading the author's books as a
child. He said the work gave him a love for new languages, though he didn't
know about linguistics at the time.
"Part of the reason I wanted to offer this course was when I was an
undergraduate, I wish I had known about linguistics," he said. "In my
department, there's more focus on teaching. Linguistics is hard. It's more
like we're realizing we always could've gotten to more people."
His hope is that some students will want to study the discipline after
taking his class.
"It's not about the movies. The stuff we're interested in is the stuff left
out in the movies," he said.
Students must read The Lord of the Rings and familiarize themselves with the
appendix that explains the development of the languages. They'll study Old
English runes, but they'll also learn Angerthas Daeron, the Elvish runes
that Mr. Tolkien created, and Angerthas Moria, the Dwarvish runes.
They'll talk about how Elvish sounds melodic and the Black Speech in the
trilogy sounds harsh.
"The good guys in his book speak beautiful languages, and the bad guys speak
ugly languages," Mr. Hoyt said.
Students said professors are right to find ways to connect teaching to
students' lives.
"If it's interesting and relevant, you'll learn it better," said Alex
Hancock, a junior.
Professors, even when they include popular film or books, are careful to
teach in depth, said UT senior Travis Lara.
"It's not more bells and whistles," he said. "It's more involvement with
students."
Eric Lee, an engineering major, never intended to study linguistics until he
saw "Middle Earth" in the course title.
"I saw it advertised on the front page of the UT Web site," Mr. Lee said. "I
was like, 'Cool. I have to take this class.' "
E-mail lwertheimer@...
DallasNews.com
The Archives
[email protected]
In a message dated 1/27/03 11:59:50 AM, durrell@... writes:
<< AUSTIN – The University of Texas students scribbled their names in a
strange
language. The A's looked like F's, the P's resembled gibberish. >>
Interesting in an ugly kind of way.
"Gibberish" has to do with unintelligible sounds. Not what things look like.
So I was prepared for that particular writer to be confused about other
things. (And where was the editor??)
Anglo Saxon "runes" isn't right, but it's close enough for someone who
doesn't know what gibberish means.
Teaching those languages as languages is pretty useless, but if the professor
is using it as a way to discuss the history of Germanic languages and how
they became the Scandinavian languages, and English and Flemish, that could
be cool.
<<UT isn't alone in jumping on the Tolkien bandwagon. This fall, three
Dallas-area universities will team up to teach a literature class about the
trilogy for students from the University of Dallas in Irving, Southern
Methodist University and the University of Texas at Dallas.
[SO FAR SO GOOD, discussing Tolkien as literature. That's not new. Maybe
for Southern Methodist to do it is new. <g>]
<<The trend isn't new. For at least two decades, some professors have taught
popular culture classes about film and TV shows and at times faced ridicule
from colleagues.>>
AHA!!!! The author trips on his unintelligible tongue again, and forgets
that studtying Tolkien's BOOKS as literature has zip to do with film or TV
shows.
Sandra
<< AUSTIN – The University of Texas students scribbled their names in a
strange
language. The A's looked like F's, the P's resembled gibberish. >>
Interesting in an ugly kind of way.
"Gibberish" has to do with unintelligible sounds. Not what things look like.
So I was prepared for that particular writer to be confused about other
things. (And where was the editor??)
Anglo Saxon "runes" isn't right, but it's close enough for someone who
doesn't know what gibberish means.
Teaching those languages as languages is pretty useless, but if the professor
is using it as a way to discuss the history of Germanic languages and how
they became the Scandinavian languages, and English and Flemish, that could
be cool.
<<UT isn't alone in jumping on the Tolkien bandwagon. This fall, three
Dallas-area universities will team up to teach a literature class about the
trilogy for students from the University of Dallas in Irving, Southern
Methodist University and the University of Texas at Dallas.
[SO FAR SO GOOD, discussing Tolkien as literature. That's not new. Maybe
for Southern Methodist to do it is new. <g>]
<<The trend isn't new. For at least two decades, some professors have taught
popular culture classes about film and TV shows and at times faced ridicule
from colleagues.>>
AHA!!!! The author trips on his unintelligible tongue again, and forgets
that studtying Tolkien's BOOKS as literature has zip to do with film or TV
shows.
Sandra
waptia <[email protected]>
--- In [email protected], SandraDodd@a... wrote:
in a
LOL! Too true.
to remember when the last blast of Tolkien mania went through. The
Calendar Art by those brothers in the 70's was way cool.
Peggy
>names
> In a message dated 1/27/03 11:59:50 AM, durrell@a... writes:
>
> << AUSTIN â" The University of Texas students scribbled their
in a
> strangelook like.
>
> language. The A's looked like F's, the P's resembled gibberish. >>
>
> Interesting in an ugly kind of way.
>
> "Gibberish" has to do with unintelligible sounds. Not what things
LOL! Too true.
>other
> So I was prepared for that particular writer to be confused about
> things. (And where was the editor??)who
>
> Anglo Saxon "runes" isn't right, but it's close enough for someone
> doesn't know what gibberish means.professor
>
> Teaching those languages as languages is pretty useless, but if the
> is using it as a way to discuss the history of Germanic languagesand how
> they became the Scandinavian languages, and English and Flemish,that could
> be cool.three
> <<UT isn't alone in jumping on the Tolkien bandwagon. This fall,
>about the
> Dallas-area universities will team up to teach a literature class
>Southern
> trilogy for students from the University of Dallas in Irving,
>Maybe
> Methodist University and the University of Texas at Dallas.
>
> [SO FAR SO GOOD, discussing Tolkien as literature. That's not new.
> for Southern Methodist to do it is new. <g>]That's where it probably gets weird, what with CS Lewis and all. ;)
>have taught
>
> <<The trend isn't new. For at least two decades, some professors
>ridicule
> popular culture classes about film and TV shows and at times faced
>forgets
> from colleagues.>>
>
> AHA!!!! The author trips on his unintelligible tongue again, and
> that studtying Tolkien's BOOKS as literature has zip to do with filmor TV
> shows.He could have said they did the same thing 25 or 30 years ago, trying
>
> Sandra
to remember when the last blast of Tolkien mania went through. The
Calendar Art by those brothers in the 70's was way cool.
Peggy