The Signum Scene

• Storyweb 000 - Trailer

  Introducing Storyweb, a new series of chats with authors and creators from the Signum Plaza.

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• Storyweb 001 - Sparrow Alden

  In this inaugural episode of the Storyweb series, Christopher Bartlett interviews Sparrow Alden about her history and process as a writer. They discuss A Flash of Wings, Sparrow’s anthology of flash fiction that appears in the Signum University Collaboratory. https://collaboratory.signumuniversity.org/library/37

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• State of the University Address, 2024

  Join President Corey Olsen for a look at the year that has been and a discussion of Signum's direction in 2025 and beyond! Please consider supporting Signum University. https://signumuniversity.org/news/find-joy-learn-the-things-that-you-love/ https://signumuniversity.org/support/donate/ More about Signum University https://signumuniversity.org/new-here/ https://signumuniversity.org/

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  1:33:53
• Thesis Theater: Jay Moses, "Seedbed Of Darkness: M.R. James, Folk Horror, And 17th Century England"

  This recording from November 1, 2024. Signum University presents Thesis Theater with Jay Moses on Saturday, November 1, 2024 at 5pm ET. M.R. James was recognized and acclaimed for his short stories of the macabre written at the turn of the twentieth century. In the 1970’s the new genre of Folk Horror arose, basing many of its stories within the England countryside, and claiming M.R. James as a significant foundation and forerunner. While setting most of his stories in present day England, several of them are set within 17th Century England. This Thesis explores four of James’ stories with settings in 17th Century England: The Fenstanton Witch, The Ash Tree, Martin’s Close and The Rose Garden and attempts to discern what exactly drew James to this time period, but more importantly, what it was about this time period that lent itself to Folk Horror. It is the conclusion of this Thesis that the great instability of England, combining Puritan beliefs, fanatical authority, and brutal punishments, laid the seeds of paranoia and rural unease from which M.R. James and Folk Horror both created tales of terror. About the Presenter: Jay Moses is a pastor at Saint Mark Presbyterian Church in the DC area, teaching adjunct at the University of Maryland. His favorite memories leading to his studies at Signum are finding yellow-worn paperbacks of Ray Bradbury in his sister’s book shelf, watching the Hobbit with cheese popcorn made by his mother, and listening to the many ghost stories told by his father while camping. His wife is the best thing about him, and his children continue to wonder if he really reads his books. About Signum Thesis Theaters: Each of our master’s students writes a thesis at the end of their degree program, exploring a topic of their choice. The Thesis Theater is their opportunity to present their research to a general audience, and answer questions. All are welcome to attend! Registration is open for the Spring 2025 semester (term begins January 13th)! To view our upcoming courses: https://signumuniversity.org/degree-programs/graduate/upcoming-courses/ Learn about Signum University’s mission, leadership and more: https://signumuniversity.org/about/. Want to enjoy Signum’s educational offerings? Start here! https://signumuniversity.org/non-degree-programs/

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• Thesis Theater: Peter DeVault, "Illuminating the Metrical Grammar of Germanic Alliterative Poetry"

  This recording from September 28, 2024. Signum University presents Thesis Theater with Peter DeVault on Saturday, September 28, 2024 at 10am ET. Modern metrical analysis of Germanic alliterative poetry (GAP) has invariably proceeded from edited texts in which the poem is represented visually as verses on a printed page or screen. Of course, that is not how these poems came down to us. The manuscript form of a GA poem is typically indistinguishable from prose, the words (and abbreviations) inscribed margin to margin on parchment, with little or no indication of where one verse ends and another begins. This manuscript arrangement is a trove for learning how medieval poets and scribes assembled and presented their materials. Remarkably, the abstract structure of a GAP poem can be recovered from manuscript “storage” by someone having no prior familiarity with the poem. Hitherto, to present the poem has been to lose the manuscript. I propose an alternative that illuminates on the one hand the continuity between manuscript and poetic text, and on the other, the versecraft of the poet as evidenced in the text. The annotation scheme and processing method outlined in this thesis allow us to create a TEI/Menota compatible xml document based on a medieval germanic poem realized in a particular manuscript. This document can contain several overlapping layers of information: the layout of the words on the manuscript page along with their linguistic and morphological features and decomposition into syllables; the organization of those words into poetic lines and verses; and a projection of metrical features onto this abstract structure. While being itself a data source for further programmatic analytic and comparative work, this document can in turn be transformed into an interactive html representation showing any of these layers of information. In this presentation, you will see how these methods and tools work in the context of selections from five poetic manuscripts including portions of Beowulf and the Poetic Edda. About the Presenter: Peter DeVault hails from the upper Midwest of the United States, where he works at a healthcare software company leading a team developing applications for clinical genomics. Having discovered Signum University in 2019 while tracking down linguistic resources for Tolkien’s invented languages, he has since immersed himself in a world of medieval Germanic languages and texts. When he isn’t grappling with philology and metrics, Peter composes and records music and talks with his grandchild about dragons. Benjamin Bagby's "Beowulf: The Epic Performance": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WcIK_8f7oQ&t=0s About Signum Thesis Theaters: Each of our master’s students writes a thesis at the end of their degree program, exploring a topic of their choice. The Thesis Theater is their opportunity to present their research to a general audience, and answer questions. All are welcome to attend! Registration is open for the Spring 2025 semester (term begins January 13th)! To view our upcoming courses: https://signumuniversity.org/degree-programs/graduate/upcoming-courses/. Learn about Signum University’s mission, leadership and more: https://signumuniversity.org/about/. Want to enjoy Signum’s educational offerings? Start here! https://signumuniversity.org/non-degree-programs/.

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