Signum News & Events: 23-29 October | Welcome to Signum University’s weekly newsletter. Here we share with you the upcoming events, courses, happenings, and news relevant to the Signum community. We’re glad you’re part of our community, and we hope to connect with you at one of our upcoming events or one of our upcoming courses! | | |
Announcements from Corey
We have TWO announcements from Corey that should be on your radar!
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First, Corey and Maggie will be releasing their long interview with JD Payne and Patrick McKay, show creators of Amazon's The Rings of Power series, on Monday, October 26 on the Rings & Realms YouTube channel. Also that Monday both Corey and Maggie will discuss the interview on their Other Minds and Hands podcast,, as well as Corey's experience at Amazon's "Closer to the World" event. You can watch Other Minds and Hands live on our Twitch or YouTube channels at 4pm ET.
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The bigger announcement, however, is at 8pm ET on that same Monday (October 26), Corey will host a special Launch Event live on our Signum Twitch and YouTube channels. At the event, Corey will be launching Signum's Fall Fundraising Campaign, but even more excitingly, he will be launching the Signum Fellowship officially into the world! Corey will be showing some of the new Signum operations that are moving into the Fellowship, as well as providing information on how organizations, artists, and creators can benefit from joining.
| So clear your calendar on Monday, October 26! It's going to be an all-day Signum extravaganza!! | | |
EverLearn
EverLearn is Signum’s non-credit program developed to provide dynamic opportunities for lifelong personal growth and enrichment.
| | Announcements from the EverLearn Team! | | |
Celebrate Five Years of Learning for Sheer Joy!
On your Blackberry World Map, you can see how far our community reaches! You can add your own location if you wish! Your name and location dot will automatically be added to the map!
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French in EverLearn with Dr. Teresa Hawes!
This module is the perfect starting point for absolute beginners with little to no prior experience. Designed to get you speaking French from day one, we will learn vocabulary, practical expressions, and the grammar you actually need to be understood.
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Jessi R. about EverLearn:
This course perfectly blended learning about and writing fairy tales. Having an opportunity to follow writing prompts based on the stories we'd read & discussed earlier in the week really affirmed what we were learning. I was nervous about the writing piece, but the preceptors & my classmates were enthusiastic & supportive.
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Pre-Enrollment is Da Bomb!
We are now accepting pre-enrollments for the ENTIRE winter quarter — December, January, February — and you can choose to pre-enroll at the $140 level (the option will pop up to buy a shiny reduced price Token), or spend one of your pre-existing Tokens. Why should you do this?? Rumor has it that Rob and Jen Gosselin are spending a Spooky Hallowe’en deciding which candidates will be confirmed all the way through February.
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Treasured friends!
We approach that time of year, that's right:
Daylight No Longer Needs Saving.
If you are currently on British Summer Time, this Sunday, 25 October at 2:00 AM you will set your clock back to 1:00 AM and enter Greenwich Mean Time. For the next seven days, it will seem to you that all Signum Events start one hour later than usual.
Greenwich Mean Time and Eastern Daylight Saving Time are FOUR hours apart.
On Sunday, 1 November, the folks in the United States using Daylight Saving Time will set their clocks back as well, restoring the five-hour differential between our Brits and Signum Time.
For further calculations, please use TimeAndDate.com, and remember to use the relevant dates! (edited)
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Start Your EverLearn Journey!
One month-long module, live online, designed to fit your schedule. Engage with world-class instructors and like-minded learners every month. If you have any questions along the way or would like any more information about EverLearn, simply let us know at everlearn@signumu.org. We’d love to hear from you!
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Collaboratory
The Signum Collaboratory is more than a publishing office; it is an interactive creative community. Subscribers get access to all books published by Signum University Press, Signum Studios videos as they drop, hundreds of hours of recorded lectures, plus a sneak peak at works in progress! Membership enables you to engage in discussions and make suggestions to our creators, and even meet with authors and production teams.
This is your LAST CHANCE to pre-order our documentary with Dr. Verlyn Flieger, The Stories that Come to Us: A Conversation with Verlyn Flieger.
Led by Jonatan Lyssens and Maggie Parke, these interviews are accessible, comfortable and from her own home - it's like sitting down for a chat over a cup of tea with one of the legends in the field.
Join us as we delve into the fascinating life and groundbreaking work of Dr. Flieger, offering an intimate exploration of her profound insights into J.R.R. Tolkien's legacy. Her expertise illuminates the deepest corners of Tolkien's world, enriching the understanding of both devoted fans and scholars.
Click here to pre-order now so you can be among the first to watch these incredible interviews! You don't want to miss out!
Enjoy watching this TWENTY MINUTE preview of our documentary!
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Grad School
Signum University’s M.A. in Language and Literature focuses on close, critical readings of classical and contemporary texts in their historical and conceptual contexts. The Master’s Degree in Language and Literature is designed with the following objectives in mind:
- To equip our students to rediscover languages in their literary contexts by pursuing language acquisition for scholarly research.
- To develop in our students the ability to enjoy, research, and discuss literary texts in a meaningful way, bringing depth and creativity to ongoing academic conversations.
- To encourage our students to connect with other scholars and creatives in their specific fields of interest.
- To guide our students through the process of creating and presenting a quality capstone project.
News from the Grad School!
Spring 2027 MA Course Registration is Open!
We are pleased to announce that Registration for the Spring 2027 Term is now open! Spring classes will begin the week of Monday, January 4, 2027. Graduate students and auditors can now register here via Goldberry. Our Spring courses include:
The Inklings and King Arthur
Live Discussion by Gabriel Schenk
Recorded Lectures by Gabriel Schenk & Maggie Parke
This course includes two pre-recorded 90-minute lectures per week with one 60-minute discussion session as assigned.
Ursula K. Le Guin: Worldbuilder
Live Discussion & Recorded Lectures by Kristine Ainsworth Swank
This course includes two live 90-minute lectures per week with one 60-minute discussion session as assigned.
Beowulf in Old English
Live Discussion by Paul Peterson (No Pre-Recorded Lectures)
This course meets for two 90-minute preceptor-led discussion sessions each week (three hours total per week)
Prerequisite: Introduction to Old English or a comparable introductory course in Old English at another institution (subject to instructor approval)
Students can learn more about Upcoming Courses here, and should contact signum.courses@signumu.org or their assigned advisor with any questions.
For more information on Signum's options for graduate level study, students can visit the website:
https://signumuniversity.org/degree-programs/graduate/
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Signum Events
Signum Regional Moots
Each month, Dr. Corey Olsen, The Tolkien Professor and president of Signum University, hits the road to places across the globe for a gathering of people who share our joy of Tolkien, speculative fiction, languages, creative writing, and everything that we do at Signum through our Regional Moot Program. This is a chance to not only meet Corey, but to meet other people where you live, and online, that share your passions and curiosities. If you don't live near where we're gathering next, you can always join the conversation remotely for a fun day of presentations, stimulating talks, and creative workshops!
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New England Moot 2026: The Second Breakfast Club: Food, Feasting, and Famine in the Legendarium
Studio Lab, Derry, NH, USA
October 24, 2026
From the seed-cakes of Bag End to the lembas of Lórien, from Beorn’s honeyed cream to Gollum’s raw fish, food in Tolkien’s legendarium stimulates both body and soul. Food and drink in Tolkien also connects to ritual, gender, class, and the environment. A single Ent draught from Wellinghall, salted pork from Bree, or the wine of the Elvenking’s halls; each carries economic, political, and sometimes even liturgical weight. It is a moral language, a marker of civilization, a weapon of hospitality, and sometimes a haunting absence. The “Second Breakfast Club” invites presentations that take food, drink, or their lack of through famine, war, and pestilence, as a narrative, theological, and ecological force in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and beyond.
Ideas to nourish your imagination include:
- The Politics of Poaching: How does Gollum’s diet (raw fish, orc scraps) mark him as irredeemably “other” while Sam’s cooking of coneys shows skill and care?
- The Wines of Dorwinion: Trade routes, luxury goods, and the hidden economy of Middle-earth.
- Beorn’s Table: Vegetarian hospitality and the ethics of eating in a world with sentient animals and Ents.
- “Po-ta-toes”: The humble potato as a symbol of hobbit resilience, a New World crop in a pseudo-medieval world, and the physics of boiling, mashing, and sticking in a stew.
We welcome close readings, comparative studies, and interdisciplinary approaches (history, anthropology, religion, ecology, disability studies, etc.) that examine the edible and the inedible, the feast and the fast, the communal table and the solitary crumb.
Carolina Moot 2026: The Salt of Middle-earth: Minor Characters Who Season the Tale
Drury Inn & Suites Charlotte Northlake, Charlotte, NC, USA
November 7, 2026
Aragorn had a reforged sword. Gandalf had a ring of fire. But Barliman Butterbur had a bad memory and a good heart, and that’s enough to change the course of history. This year’s Carolina Moot celebrates the minor characters in Tolkien’s legendarium. The smaller voices, the one‑scene wonders, and the quieter souls of Middle-earth: characters who carry no rings, speak no prophecies, and wield no legendary blades, yet without them the story would taste of nothing.
Possible ideas for proposals might include:
- A study on your favorite minor character from The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and The History of Middle-earth.
- Creative submissions: a monologue from Bill the Pony, a letter from Ioreth, a song of the nameless Rohirrim
- Discussing what narrative work minor characters perform (comic relief, local knowledge, moral grounding)
- How minor characters reflect Tolkien’s views on ordinary life, community, or the dignity of labor
- Why readers so often remember a character who appears only a few times
The great tales are not woven by kings and warriors alone. They are seasoned by the farmer who lends a hand, the pony who carries the load, and the old woman who keeps talking long enough to jog people’s memories. We welcome proposals that give these characters the spotlight they deserve.
Motown Moot 2026: Tolkien and the Modern Age
Schoolcraft College, Livonia ,MI, USA
December 12, 2026
While J.R.R. Tolkien is often celebrated as a sub-creator of ancient mythologies and a chronicler of a lost heroic past, his profound and complex relationship with the Modern Age demands fresh exploration. Motown Moot seeks to investigate the dynamic interplay between Tolkien’s legendarium and the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We invite presentations that look at, and beyond, the view of Tolkien as a critic of modernity, and examine how his work engages with, critiques, and even unexpectedly illuminates modern, contemporary concerns.
Potential topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Tolkien’s response to the trauma of industrial warfare and technological acceleration
- Eco-critical readings of his works in an age of climate crisis
- The modern applicability of Tolkien’s themes of community, stewardship, and resistance
- Post-modern and adaptive readings of Tolkien’s texts
- The relevance of Tolkien’s concepts of eucatastrophe, estel, and amdir in an anxious world
Come join us in Detroit with one foot in the distant past and the other in the present.
For a full list of all our confirmed Signum Regional Moots, click this link here.
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Mythgard Institute
The Mythgard Institute at Signum University provides an array of open-access educational programs and events for all to enjoy! Our purpose is to offer academic content in an accessible way, to build a fun and enthusiastic community, and to facilitate a space for sharing curated, quality, geeky content. Come as you are and join us!
WriterSpace
WriterSpace has a new schedule for the rest of the year. Join us!
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Signum University
1 Hardy Rd #389, Bedford, NH 03110
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