\nAuthor<\/strong>:\u00a0Emil Johansson
\nPublication<\/strong> Date<\/strong>: January 2012
\nOfficial<\/strong> Website<\/strong>: http:\/\/lotrproject.com\/<\/a>
\n
![\"logobig\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/logobig.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWhen I was first approached to contribute to this Webtext Madness, I knew I wanted to do something Alt.Ac., and I knew right away what I wanted to show off:<\/p>\n
I admit it. I\u2019m a huge nerd above and beyond many people I know, and I grew up reading Tolkien. In fact, I\u2019m pretty sure The Hobbit was the first \u201creal\u201d book I read on my own as a kid. I\u2019ve always been a huge fan — I\u2019ve read The Silmarillion, The Book of Lost Tales, Children of Hurin —\u00a0<\/em>you name it! Tolkien fans have been a presence on the web since its inception, as far as I can tell, with fan sites, wikis, and all the rest.<\/p>\n So when my friend first sent me the link for The LotR Project, I admit my expectations weren\u2019t super high. But wow.<\/p>\n I think the reason Johansson\u2019s webtext impresses me is not just because of the presentation of the information but also because of its breadth and depth. Don\u2019t get me wrong – having a full wiki-integrated genealogy of Tolkien\u2019s Legendarium is super impressive! But I really love the way Johansson has derived data out of Tolkien\u2019s work and given us a new way to think about the texts.<\/p>\n I certainly don\u2019t think of myself as a statistics or “big data” guy by any stretch, but I think there\u2019s something really compelling about converting literature to data then back into interpretations. Let\u2019s be honest: It really says something that only 18% of the 900+ characters Tolkien describes are female<\/a>, and only ONE of them is a dwarf!<\/p>\n Outside of that, Johansson\u2019s data mash-ups, the geospatial timeline<\/a> in particular, are fun and cool and give us a fresh way to imagine the events across both time and space. And if so much can be done with a fictional world, imagine what students could do with the real world!<\/p>\n Related Resources: Title: The Lord of the Rings Project Author:\u00a0Emil Johansson Publication Date: January 2012 Official Website: http:\/\/lotrproject.com\/ When I was first approached to contribute to this Webtext Madness, I knew I wanted to do something Alt.Ac., and I knew right away what I wanted to show off: I admit it. I\u2019m a huge nerd above and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":9487,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[70,142,216],"ppma_author":[1213],"class_list":{"0":"post-6852","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-webtext-of-the-month","8":"tag-data","9":"tag-march-madness","10":"tag-webtext"},"authors":[{"term_id":1213,"user_id":28,"is_guest":0,"slug":"kmohn","display_name":"Karl Mohn","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/bcebeafe0de5fbc3bfb8cd2ea4539e87?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","user_url":"","last_name":"Mohn","first_name":"Karl","job_title":"","description":"Karl is a Ph.D. student at the University of Georgia. His focus areas are digital humanities, rhetoric and composition, and comics studies. He gets to read and write comics and play video games and call it research. Jealous?"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10480,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6852\/revisions\/10480"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6852"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=6852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBrian Croxall’s “The American Century” geospatial timeline<\/a>
\nEmil Johansson speaking at TEDxGotenborg<\/a>
\n\u00a0A dissenting voice from Stephen Marche, “Literature is not data”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"