FREE Xlnt Hans Christian Andersen Online Course Returns Oct 24 2016 - Registration Open Now

We were thrilled to hear this course is being offered again this year! Gypsy Thornton, our Lead Fairy Tale Newshound, was able to attend the first few weeks in 2015, and reports being happily surprised at how in depth it was, while still being accessible to lay folk who enjoy fairy tale scholarship. It was regretful she was unable to continue due to health issues at the time. She plans to return to complete more, if not all, of the course this year.

One great benefit of this course is meeting hundreds (yes, hundreds) of people from around the world who are interested in fairy tales. We hope to see some of our readers  there!

Explore the fairy tale world of H.C. Andersen

- the inspiration behind The Little Mermaid and Frozen -

with this free online course.

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN'S FAIRY TALES FREE COURSE FROM FUTURE LEARN

NOTE:THIS IS A RE-POST OF AN ANNOUNCEMENT, COMBINING INFORMATION FROM THE INITIAL COURSE IN 2015 AS WELL AS THE UPCOMING ONE ON OCTOBER 24, 2016.

ABOUT THE COURSE

This free online course will introduce you to some of Hans Christian Andersen’s most popular fairy tales, share the story of the writer himself, and discuss his cross-cultural importance today, as the inspiration behind many popular books and movies.

Interpret Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales with experts from his birthplace

You will learn with experts from the HC Andersen Center at the University of Southern Denmark – an internationally renowned research institution located in the writer’s birthplace, Odense.

Each week, these experts will guide a discussion, analysis and interpretation of one of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales, including:

• The Tinderbox
• The Travelling Companion
• The Little Mermaid
• The Snow Queen (the inspiration for Disney’s Frozen)
• The Story of a Mother
• The Red Shoes

New English translations of the fairy tales will be used. You can download them from this website.

You will explore the themes of each story, and investigate how they both conform with and digress from the basic elements of the fairy tale and the folk tale.

The fairy tale genre became very popular in the period of literary history to which Hans Christian Andersen belongs, Romanticism, when childhood was discovered as an age that is important in its own right. What Hans Christian Andersen did with this genre is absolutely unique - there are no other writers of fairy tales like him.

Through the course, you will understand how Hans Christian Andersen’s authorship developed. From the rewriting of old folk tales via self-invented fairy tales to his so-called new fairy tales characterized by a modern approach.

Explore Hans Christian Andersen’s enduring, universal appeal

The majority of Hans Christian Andersen’s 157 fairy tales have been translated into at least 150 languages. They not only create a fantasy world for children, but also explore universal, sinister and more adult themes such as death, grief and loss.

Through this course, you will discover why his stories have such an enduring and universal appeal - for both children and adults.

Understand the writer’s life - from humble beginnings to global fame

Hans Christian Andersen often described himself as a “bog plant” - his roots were deeply anchored in mire and mud, but he constantly stretched up for the light of the sun.

Through the course, you will understand this analogy, reflecting on how the writer grew from humble beginnings, to achieve fame and acknowledgement as an artist in both Europe and America while he was in his prime. After his death, he became famous in Asia and all other parts of the world.

REQUIREMENTS

You will need a basic ability to read and understand Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales in English. Otherwise, a curiosity about and a love for the fairy tale genre is the sole prerequisite for the course.

Join the conversation on social media.

Use the hashtag #FLfairytales to join and contribute to social media conversations about this course.

(NOTE: IMAGES BY HELEN STRATTON)

Free Online Course on Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales for Late 2015 - Registration Open Now!

Note:this is a Repost of an Announcement (Additional images are by Helen Stratton)

Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales

Explore the fairy tale world of H.C. Andersen - the inspiration behind The Little Mermaid and Frozen - with this free online course.

ABOUT THE COURSE

This free online course will introduce you to some of Hans Christian Andersen’s most popular fairy tales, share the story of the writer himself, and discuss his cross-cultural importance today, as the inspiration behind many popular books and movies.

Interpret Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales with experts from his birthplace

You will learn with experts from the HC Andersen Center at the University of Southern Denmark – an internationally renowned research institution located in the writer’s birthplace, Odense.

Each week, these experts will guide a discussion, analysis and interpretation of one of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales, including:

• The Tinderbox
• The Travelling Companion
• The Little Mermaid
• The Snow Queen (the inspiration for Disney’s Frozen)
• The Story of a Mother
• The Red Shoes

You will explore the themes of each story, and investigate how they both conform with and digress from the fairy tale. This genre became very popular in the period of literary history to which Hans Christian Andersen belongs, Romanticism, when childhood was discovered as an age that is important in its own right.

But what Hans Christian Andersen did with this genre is absolutely unique - there are no other writers of fairy tales like him.

Explore Hans Christian Andersen’s enduring, universal appeal

The majority of Hans Christian Andersen’s 157 fairy tales have been translated into at least 150 languages. They not only create a fantasy world for children, but also explore universal, sinister and more adult themes such as death, grief and loss.

Through this course, you will discover why his stories have such an enduring and universal appeal - for both children and adults.

Understand the writer’s life - from humble beginnings to global fame

Hans Christian Andersen often described himself as a “bog plant” - his roots were deeply anchored in mire and mud, but he constantly stretched up for the light of the sun.

Through the course, you will understand this analogy, reflecting on how the writer grew from humble beginnings, to achieve fame and acknowledgement as an artist in both Europe and America while he was in his prime. After his death, he became famous in Asia and all other parts of the world.

REQUIREMENTS

You will need a basic ability to read and understand Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales in English. Otherwise, a curiosity about and a love for the fairy tale genre is the sole prerequisite for the course.

(CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS and to register. start date currently unknown, but will be later in 2015.)

Course Details on the FREE USF Fairy Tale MOOC with Kevin Yee (Starts August 5th!)

Note: All images in this post are from one of my newer favorite illustrated version of Snow White. These are from "Blancanieves" by Iban Barranetxea (website/blog at link)

Free Online Class: Fairy Tales by Kevin Yee 

(Reposted from HERE with permission)

Some of you know that my “day job” is in Higher Education. Among the classes I teach is one on Fairy Tales, with focus on Disney, Grimms, and Perrault. This college class is now available to the general public, and it’s completely free! There’s not even a book to buy for the class! 

The class is a massive open online course (MOOC) and is administered through canvas.net - it’s free to sign up and take the class! It’s a four-week course starting on August 5. 

Here’s the schedule:
Week 1 – Cinderella
Week 2 – Snow White and Sleeping Beauty
Week 3 – Rapunzel and the Frog Princess
Week 4 – Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast 

The class was built to expect about two hours of engagement/interaction (“work”) per week, so it’s not meant to overload the participants with chores and duties. In that sense, it’s less rigorous than my regular college classes. The class doesn’t have any required (synchronous) meetings; you do the work whenever you want within the week. 

This course does not have a completion certificate – you’d be taking it just for the fun of it. There aren’t any papers or projects. While the class does offer quizzes and discussion boards, there isn’t really a rigorous process to “pass” the course since there isn’t a certificate offered anyway. 

The class is, however, experimental in a different sense: it’s got game elements in it. We added badges and group competition, as well as Easter eggs, throughout the class. Each group is named after one of Walt’s seven dwarfs–it works a lot like the Harry Potter “house” competition, where individuals can earn badges for the whole group. This should be fun! 

Please feel free to sign up and spread the word. I can’t wait to share with you what these fairy tales used to mean and how they’ve been changed for modern audiences!! Sign up HERE.

One of the "nicer" (?) ways I've seen the Queen depicted ,dancing to her death in red hot iron shoes

I've signed up. Will you join me? Hope to see some of you next week and talk fairy tales with you!

USF Offers Its First MOOC. And It's a Fairy Tale Subject!

The Iron Stove by Warwick Goble

The illustrations in this post are from the awesome princess story The Iron Stove. Both Grimm's Household Tales and also in Lang's Yellow Fairy Book have a version. Click on the links in this paragraph to read this fun and different princess story.

What the heck is a MOOC? It stands for Massive Open Online Course. Which means, it's open to everyone (no prerequisites), it's online (no traveling) and it's a bona-fide higher education course (so expect assignments and being required to participate via email and online discussion boards) which you can receive credit.

The Iron Stove (which looks suspiciously like a TARDIS here) -
Artist unknown

This one lasts for 4 weeks and commences August 5th (2013) and finishes September 1st.

This one is also FREE.


The subject: "Fairy Tales: Origins and Evolution of Princess Stories." (Yay.)

If you haven't heard much about MOOCs or online learning, here's theTampa Bay Times' in-depth look from earlier this year. They're the latest trend in free, accessible higher education, with schools from Stanford University to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology taking part. USF professors have taught independent MOOCs before, but this is the school's first official offering.

I am really excited about this MOOC trend! Let's hope more fairy tale courses become available.

The Iron Stove by H.J. Ford  - Yellow Fairy Book

Here's a little more about this particular one:

The four-week class, "Fairy Tales: Origins and Evolution of Princess Stories," will be taught by professor Kevin Yee, who holds a Ph.D in German language and literature, and who USF describes as an expert on "comparative literature and German Romanticism and online learning." 

Course description:
"Princess stories have been popular for centuries and remain so today around the world; we’ll dive into what these fairy tales mean, and trace the history of these narratives back to their source material, examining contexts all along the way. We’ll borrow tools from cultural studies, literature studies, and film studies to help us analyze these phenomena and what they mean to our society.
Many of us may associate princess stories with modern-day products (much of it marketed to small children) or with Disney movies and theme parks. We’ll examine these current versions of fairy tale mythos as well, using our new interpretive tools to uncover not just what’s been changed in the moral and message of the narrative, but what the stories mean as told now."

So where do you sign up? Right HERE. :)

The Iron Stove by H. J. Ford - Yellow Fairy Book

Sources: TampaBay.com, University of South Florida

The Fairy Tale Factory - September '09 Workshop

Amy Morgan's Fairy Tale Factory in Seattle, WA, has a workshop coming up in September for writers.

But it's not just about writing new fairy tales, although there's quite a bit of skill involved in that. Writers of all kinds should benefit from learning the principles of distilling a story down to a very tight plot then fleshing it out with the right motifs and brief descriptions to feel not only timeless, but relevant across cultures too.

Here's the blurb from the website:

Spend six weeks in the land of Fairy. Learn the basic rules of the genre, plus a variety of approaches to fairy tales as readers and as writers. Study western European tales from the late middle ages to modern times. Write a lot! Writing exercises assigned after each class. By the end of the course you will have written at least one original fairy tale of your own. All experience levels welcome.

Interested? Here are the details:

Intro to Writing Fairy Tales
September 16 - October 21
Wednesday nights (6 classes)

How can you not want to spend weeks absorbed in fairy tales from around the world?

If you're already an avid fairy tale reader (and possibly writer) there's also a "Fairy Tale Factory Writing Intensive" workshop following that (date to be announced). I really like the sound of this too!

Here's the blurb from FTF:

Use fairy tales to sharpen your skills as a writer. This six-week workshop focuses on plot and language. We’ll do writing exercises in class and for homework, each one designed to push your edge in the areas of creativity, language, and story. By the end of the course you will be getting a bigger bang for your buck out of your stories. You will also (hopefully) develop a deeper relationship with language and inspiration. You will write at least one original fairy tale. Intro to Writing Fairy Tales recommended as a prerequisite.

You can find out more about Ms. Morgan HERE and there's a brief, but fun, interview with "Reading Local Seattle" HERE. You can also (and I highly recommend this) read three of her *new* fairy tales. I say *new*, because these tales really do read like something out of a world wide fairy tale collection though they're completely new.

To whet your appetite a little, the titles are:

The Wood Wife
The Owl and the Maiden
The Yellow Bird

And for those of us unable to travel, maybe one day we can talk her into doing an online version of these courses! (hint, hint Amy!)