July 2026 Modules

We will meet to blend learning, discussion, and playing games with reading, appreciating, and commenting on one another’s work as it is submitted for peer review. Writers are encouraged—but never required—to submit new pieces in any state of draftiness or readiness up to 2,000 words each week for peer reading and feedback. Our Collaborative Feedback method, developed here at Signum University, asks us to comment at the author's comfort level through a structured reader (not editor) response. We gather to encourage the story that the author wants to tell. Our philosophy of kindness first might just turn around your previous experience of writing groups.

Note: For more information about the Collaborative Feedback Method in SPACE, please check out our video here.

We need good tales of good people making heroic choices. Whether we write memoir, pure fiction, or a what-if-it-had-ended-well personal speculations, this module is about creating the characters whom we can admire, trust, emulate, and become. Writing these short scenes during difficult times balances our minds and hearts, and can be part of a personal path to hope. This module specifically allows us to write our inner heroes within a place of safety. When believing in heroes is hard, we need to write them anyway. Explore your own traumas, toils, and fears even if your bad situation is right now, and write your own next chapter, your terrified heroic first step.

Note: For more information about the Collaborative Feedback Method in SPACE, please check out our video here.

When a speaker feels grounded in their body, alive in their voice, and truly attentive to listeners, the whole room leans in. This participatory module helps you build those qualities through physical and embodied practice. Each session blends discussion, guided instruction, and hands-on exercises in movement, breath, and vocal exploration, so you learn how to inhabit what you want to say with greater ease and authenticity.

You’ll cultivate comfort, dynamics, and empathy for audience-centered speaking, discovering how breath, posture, rhythm, and voice can make your ideas resonate. From the spine of this module—purpose, passion, perspective—you’ll come to anchor yourself in what matters and sustain your listeners’ attention without strain.

This module is for anyone who speaks to groups online or in person—teachers, lecturers, scholars, writers, actors, facilitators, students, or community presenters. All you need is a familiar excerpt of your content, curiosity to investigate your presence, and a commitment to practice. By month’s end, you’ll leave with a reliable and grounding process you can use for any presentation, reading, or speaking engagement.

In this module we will read and discuss 104 strange tales collected by the 17th-18th century Chinese scholar, Pu Songling. Featuring Daoist/Taoist wizards, fox spirits, ghosts of all kinds, anomalous plants and animals, Buddhist wonder-workers, deities and immortals, Pu's collection has entertained audiences through centuries.

Writers and artists as diverse as Jorge Luis Borges and Martin Buber have found inspiration in these stories, and several films and film franchises such as A Chinese Ghost Story are rooted in them. Preceptors Pilar Barrera and Dr. Robert Steed will lead class sessions, which will primarily focus upon participant discussion framed by preceptor commentary designed to situate these stories in their historical, literary, and religious contexts.

This introduction to family history (a.k.a. genealogy) is designed to give students the tools they need to begin researching their family lines, discovering family stories, and learning how to work with the documents, photographs, and artifacts that preserve family history.

In this first module, we will focus on the fundamentals of getting started with family history research. Topics will include how to begin tracing family lines, how to find and evaluate useful sources, and how to keep clear research notes and records. Students will learn practical strategies for tracking down information about their ancestors—both in the United States and internationally—and will gain tools and confidence to continue their research beyond the course.

If there is interest from the group, future modules could build on this foundation in a variety of ways. These might include workshop-style sessions where students bring their research questions and discoveries for collaborative exploration; guidance on sharing family history through family trees, narratives, books, or blogs; and practical approaches to preserving family documents, photographs, and heirlooms through digitization, cataloging, and archival-safe storage. These follow-up modules would grow organically from the interests and questions of the group.

Would you like to learn what those strange symbols in the Dictionary mean? Do you wonder what are units of words or why a it is difficult to pronounce the French 'R' or Italian Trill?

In this module, we will take a little walk in the music of meaningful sounds, their representations, interactions and transformations. In order to "see" the sounds, we will record them and analyze their structure. This is an introduction to the musical world of Phonetics where we will listen, speak, write, and visualize sounds and learn their names.

This module explores the second book in the series: Catching Fire (2009).

Series Outline:

What lessons do the Capitol and Districts have to teach us? What warnings should we heed? What road leads from here to Panem? Over the course of five months, participants in these SPACE modules will read and discuss a modern classic of dystopian storytelling, The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins.

In this hybrid series, each week will include one lecture and one live discussion. The lectures will examine the inspirations behind, allusions in, and questions posed by that month's novel. In live discussions, participants will share their insights on, interpretations of, and reactions to the story. Together we will consider why this series has spoken to so many readers and explore how its messages remain relevant today.

Students will be asked to read one book over the course of each month in whatever format they choose. All of these novels are available in print, ebook, and audio format.

(Warning: The Hunger Games series include descriptions - for a young-adult audience - of substance abuse, physical abuse, violence, and death.)

Series Outline:

• Module 1: The Hunger Games (2008)

• Module 2: Catching Fire (2009)

• Module 3: Mockingjay (2010)

• Module 4: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2020)

• Module 5: Sunrise on the Reaping (2025)

This module explores the second book in the series: Catching Fire (2009).

Series Outline:

What lessons do the Capitol and Districts have to teach us? What warnings should we heed? What road leads from here to Panem? Over the course of five months, participants in these SPACE modules will read and discuss a modern classic of dystopian storytelling, The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins.

In this hybrid series, each week will include one lecture and one live discussion. The lectures will examine the inspirations behind, allusions in, and questions posed by that month's novel. In live discussions, participants will share their insights on, interpretations of, and reactions to the story. Together we will consider why this series has spoken to so many readers and explore how its messages remain relevant today.

Students will be asked to read one book over the course of each month in whatever format they choose. All of these novels are available in print, ebook, and audio format.

(Warning: The Hunger Games series include descriptions - for a young-adult audience - of substance abuse, physical abuse, violence, and death.)

Series Outline:

• Module 1: The Hunger Games (2008)

• Module 2: Catching Fire (2009)

• Module 3: Mockingjay (2010)

• Module 4: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2020)

• Module 5: Sunrise on the Reaping (2025)

In this series we’ll study Japanese using different tools such as videos, games, and different exercises. We’ll explore different aspects of Japanese culture and work on more complex vocabulary, grammar, and sentence patterns. We’ll also watch lots of videos, play games, and read graded readers among other things.

Note: Japanese Through Culture is for students who already have a basic level of Japanese.

Return to Narnia with Brenton Dickieson as we continue our journey through C.S. Lewis’s beloved other world. In this discussion-based module, we’ll read Prince Caspian, a story of wandering, restoration, and the marks of true leadership.

In Prince Caspian, the Pevensie children are called once again into their beloved land of Narnia in a great moment of need. This "return to Narnia" is a book very much set in its natural world, so a "mapping" theme makes sense. The topography of Narnia has changed, but the adventurers are carrying with them old and outdated maps. They discover that they need to redraw various maps in their heads—mental maps they use to navigate their worlds—including the relational cartographies of boys and girls, kings and servants, leaders and followers, past griefs and future hopes, empires and indigenous folks, new friends and old memories, and the like.

Whether you are continuing from Part 1 or joining us anew, come ready to read closely, share insights, and journey further into C.S. Lewis's imaginative other worlds on the next Narnian pilgrimage with Prof. Dickieson.

A most fell warrior was he, whose deeds no man of the Mark could equal…

Let’s read a tale that directly inspired Tolkien!

Deep in the primordial Mirkwood, the free folk of the Mid-mark must take up arms to protect their home. When the Roman war machine rolls across their lands, the Valkyrie Wood-Sun and warrior chief Thiodolf rally their clan to save their idyllic way of life.

An epic romance of survival and heroism in the face of overwhelming odds, William Morris weaves his tale through archaizing prose and verse. Inspired by Norse storytelling, The House of the Wolfings is by turns bloody and otherworldly, a celebration of community and the natural world.

How did a small, persecuted Jewish sect from a remote province transform the greatest empire the world had ever known? The Roman Empire's conversion to Christianity is one of history’s most influential moments that reshaped the very soul of the West. This eight-lecture journey traces the often turbulent process that turned a pagan empire into the foundation of medieval Europe. We’ll move beyond simple tales of conversion to explore a gripping story of clashing worldviews, political opportunism, spiritual fervor, and astonishing adaptability.

The module will follow an 8-session structure as shown below:

Outline	8-Session Structure
Week 1	Session 1: I A World of Many Gods: Pagan Rome Meets a Jewish Sect
	Session 2: The Offensive Faith: Why Christianity Was Different
Week 2	Session 3: Seeds in the Cracks: Growth and Adaptation in the Second and Third Centuries
	Session 4: The Imperial Convert: Constantine and the Cross of Victory
Week 3	Session 5: From Faith in Caesar to Caesar's Faith: The Christian Empire Takes Shape
	Session 6: City of God vs. City of Man: Collapse and Reinvention
Week 4	Session 7: The Christian Landscape: Rites, Rivalries, and the Erasure of Paganism
	Session 8: The Imperial Church: Justinian's Dream and the Legacy of a Baptized Rome

Although they were never completed in his lifetime, JRR Tolkien wrote what he considered his three "Great Tales" of the Elder Days and intended them to be a significant part of his wider Silmarillion. These Tales are The Tale of Beren and Lúthien, The Children of Húrin, and The Fall of Gondolin. Some parts of these Tales can be found within the published version of The Silmarillion, but the more recently available individual books provide additional and extensive details for each story.

In this course, we will have a ‘read-along’ discussion of The Children of Hurin. Each session we will consider our close reading of a section of the story, examining Tolkien’s use of language and narrative structure, as well as exploring ideas about what each Tale tells us about Tolkien’s secondary world.

Access to a copy of The Children of Hurin will be necessary, and you may find having a copy of The Silmarillion very useful.