We all love his lectures on Medieval Literature and Chaucer, but most of us spend our free academic time praying that Assistant Professor of English Corey Olsen will teach another course on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. When he does, I've heard that he has so many students enrolled (and so many auditing) that he has to teach in one of the lecture halls - something unheard of here at Washington College, with our faculty-to-student classroom ratio of something absurd, like 1:8.
Luckily, for those of us that can't be there in his seldom-taught Tolkien classes, Professor Olsen has taken to the web, with his website The Tolkien Professor and his lecture-style podcasts, available for free on iTunes under "The Tolkien Professor." "In my lectures," writes Professor Olsen, "I am working through The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings in detail, doing close readings of the stories (and the songs) in order to explore the fascinating details of Tolkien's world while also tracking some of the large, important themes in Tolkien's fiction." Right now, he's in the middle of his eight-part series on The Hobbit.
And, unsurprisingly to those of us who are familiar with Olsen's style of lecturing and his great love of what he teaches, he's #66 on the list of top podcasts on iTunes, and he's at an unbelievable #37 on the list of audio-only podcasts! He's beating the pants of Dan Savage's Savage Love, NPR, CNN, FOX, MSNBC, Ricky Garvis, and even the Harry Potter PotterCast!
Go, Professor Olsen, Go!
KAB
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