I'm taking part in a creative project centered around the transmission of the Lord's Prayer into English. The art department will be curating a show with original works based on the theme, some of the liberal arts faculty are working on scholarly publications, the library is collecting manuscripts to borrow and display, and the school of music will be performing a series of concerts, including new works written for the project. My role is to write a series of commissioned pieces for some of our own ensembles, and some guest artists that we'll be bringing in to perform.
Yesterday, they pulled all of us together, and we had an expert in Anglo Saxon (Old English) give a seminar in the migration of written language from
Futhark Runes to the latinized Anglo Saxon. We looked at everything from Bede to Beowulf and the
Lindisfarne Gospels.
The Lord Prayer read out loud in Old English.
I love this crap. This is one of my favorite things about being involved in academic life. They pay us to geek out on things, and then create new things based on it.