Dr. Marc Zender contacted us and asked that we add his new anthropology course to the Tolkien Studies on the Web catalog of college courses on Tolkien.

According to Dr. Zender, the new class is "a course on foreign languages and aspects of translation in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings at our summer school".

You can learn more about it here.

I've taken the following excerpt from Dr. Zender's Web site:

In this course, we will study the important role of language in The Lord of the Rings, applying concepts from linguistic anthropology that shed light on Tolkien’s methods and purpose as the ‘translator’ (both linguistic and cultural) of Middle-Earth. Students will be introduced to several of Tolkien's invented languages (and their real-world inspirations), as well as two of his invented alphabets. Understanding the linguistic foundations of Middle-Earth greatly increases one's enjoyment of Tolkien’s work, and provides insights into one linguist’s view of the intricate and interdependent relationships of language, culture, and society.

So if you're attending Harvard and want to check out what appears to be an interesting course on Tolkien linguistics, there you go!

Good luck!

BTW -- if you're an American or Canadian college/university-level educator and you're teaching a course on Tolkien, feel free to contact us and update your info or give us a new listing. All we ask is that the class have an online resource page we can link to.

Three quick updates.

First, a new issue of Hobbit News is now available. After a 2-month hiatus I have finally found some time to catch up on recent news.

Second, Other Minds, an Internet Tolkien journal that combines scholarly research with role-playing game-related articles, has just published its sixth issue.

Third, The Hunt For Gollum, a fan film that follows Aragorn's search for Gollum, is now available to watch online (for free) and has been since May 3 -- a fact, sadly, I was not aware of when I published the 8th issue of Hobbit News. Sorry, folks. I'll put an item in the next issue.

I'll try to watch and review the movie this week.