There and Back Again: 75 Years of The Hobbit
***New Information as of November 29***
On Saturday, December 1, the Woode-walkers Medieval Studies Group, the English Department, the English Graduate Organization, and the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at St. Louis University will present a symposium to commemorate the anniversary of J. R. R. Tolkien’s novel and to celebrate Peter Jackson’s upcoming from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The highlight of the symposium will be a plenary address by Tolkien scholar Douglas A. Anderson, the editor of The Annotated Hobbit, Tales Before Tolkien: The Roots of Modern Fantasy, and many other Tolkien and fantasy texts. All events will be held in the Sinquefield Stateroom on the fourth floor of St. Louis University’s DuBourg Hall. The symposium will also feature a St. Louis U. Barnes & Noble bookstore vendor selling select titles by and about tolkien, and a complete schedule and additional information can be found below.
All symposium sessions and the plenary address are free and open to the public. If you would like attend the sessions and plenary address, please send an email with your name to slu.hobbit.symposium@gmail.com. The deadline to register for the symposium lunch ($8 for a boxed lunch) and dinner ($15 for a catered sit-down dinner) has officially passed, but we may still have some room at both meals. To inquire on the availability of open seats at the symposium meals, please email Amanda Barton (at abarton8@slu.edu) as soon as you can. For further information on the day-long symposium, please see the information below or email us at the symposium email address (slu.hobbit.symposium@gmail.com).
Symposium Events (for individual presentation and paper titles, please read this blog post):
- 9:00am Roundtable: Teaching the Inklings in the High-school and College Classroom
Charles Hussung, St. Louis University High School
Paul D. Nygard, St. Louis Community College-Florissant Valley
Paul L. Fortunato, University of Houston
Justin T. Noetzel, St. Louis University
Matthew R. Bardowell, St. Louis University
- 10:45 am Session I: The Hobbit and J. R. R. Tolkien’s Life and Scholarship
Nora Alfaiz, George Washington University
Paul Acker, St. Louis University
Anthony Cirilla, St. Louis University
Priya Sirohi, St. Louis University
- 1:15pm Session II: The Hobbit among J. R. R. Tolkien’s Greater Mythology
Chelsea A. McGuire, St. Louis Community College-Florissant Valley
Brian Kenna, Marquette University
Amanda Cherian, St. Louis University
Ruthie Angeli
- 3:00 Session III: Myth, Media, and Mediation: Tolkien Films, Video Games, and Songs
Trish Lambert, Mythgard Institute
Paul D. Nygard, St. Louis Community College-Florissant Valley
Jasmine Tillotson, St. Louis University
Paul Hahn, St. Louis Symphony and Chorus
- 5:00pm Plenary Address
Douglas Anderson, Independent Scholar: “Illustrating and Annotating The Hobbit”
- 7:00pm Film Screening
The Hobbit (1977, directed by Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass)
For information on restaurants and activities on campus and in St. Louis, check out the Visiting SLU website: http://www.slu.edu/x816.xml. As for accomodations near campus, we recommend the following hotels:
3545 Lafayette Ave.
St. Louis, MO 63104
(314) 977-7500
Saint Louis University’s own Water Tower Inn features 62 guest rooms, five meeting rooms, food service and a fitness center. Amenities include continental breakfast, data ports in every room, free local calls, guest laundry services, on-site parking and shuttle service to and from SLU’s main campus. The Inn is located one mile south of the medical campus at SLU’s Salus Center, and features a special SLU rate of $75/ night.
3411 Olive St.
St. Louis, MO 63103
(314) 977-4411
An exceptional boutique hotel just steps away from Saint Louis University’s campus, Hotel Ignacio offers 49 well-appointed guest rooms and two suites with unique themes—fine art, performing arts, architecture and music—that showcase its location in the city’s arts center. Although no two rooms are designed exactly alike, they all offer Tempur-Pedic mattresses as well as organic bamboo sheets and towels. The hotel also has the distinction of being the first hotel in North America to offer Avaya Guest Media Hubs—cutting-edge, multi-media communication devices—in all of its rooms. The hotel offers a special SLU rate of $155/ night.
There are many locations of Drury Inn and Pear Tree Inn near campus and around St. Louis, and rooms start at $79/ night. The locations near Union Station and Forest Park are only minutes away from campus, and many offer shuttle service that can take you to and from the symposium events on Saturday. When making a reservation online, click on the “Corporate/ Biz Trip ID” option and enter “309848” to receive the St. Louis University discount.
Images courtesy of http://litstack.com/, http://tolkienandfantasy.blogspot.com/, and Justin Noetzel
[…] Hobbit Symposium The Woode-walkers Medieval Studies Group, the English Dept., and Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, St. Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri, US December 1, 2012 Call for papers: September 22, 2012 Plenary address: Douglas A. Anderson https://woodewalkers.wordpress.com/hobbit-symposium/ […]
[…] Hobbit Symposium […]