in Texas

[calimac]

Once upon a time, I gave a talk at Mythcon on a topic I called "The Structural Geography of Middle-earth." Three years ago, when the Mythcon theme was maps and landscape in fantasy, I unearthed my old notes and gave the talk again.

Last week was the third time.

The second talk was heard by a professor who was organizing a summer institute on Tolkien, designed as continuing education for high-school teachers. She liked what she heard and asked if I'd like to be one of the invited guest-expert speakers. I said sure. Two years of organizing and countless e-mails later, I turned up in a classroom, faced my 13 dwarves auditors, and began.

Most of my Mythcon papers are quite a challenge to stuff into an hour slot. This time I had three hours (plus break) so I could be expansive. I was also speaking to an audience who weren't all Tolkien experts, so I did not assume they already knew exactly where Bilbo, Frodo, and Beren went on their quests, but pointed these out on the maps I'd had made into transparencies and projected on a screen. (No doubt these things can be done in PowerPoint. But not by me they can't.)

Some of the participants talked Tolkien with me at lunch afterwards. This was nice. But I regretted the lack of interactivity in the classroom. I admire teachers who can draw their students out. These people weren't even technically my students, but I could have done better. At least the supervising professor kept nodding with approval during the class session at almost everything I said.

I left with two fat volumes of handouts and a university coffee mug.

The college was in Texas. Texas. In August. Texas.

What else I did with myself in this environment will have to wait for the next post.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

That sounds really cool. I remember that I brought Fonstad's book to every session of "Under the Shadow," my roleplaying campaign where Sauron grabbed Frodo just after he passed through Shelob's lair, got the Ring back, and conquered nearly everybody, and the player characters were in the Resistance; we would trace the desolated areas, or the journeys the characters had to make, over those handy large-scale maps. . . . I'm sure that had I heard your paper it would have enriched my handling of the material.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

You have to ask questions that are fun to answer, and not risky, to draw them out.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

A little toasty down there, was it?