{"id":780,"date":"2014-02-16T18:49:02","date_gmt":"2014-02-16T16:49:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=780"},"modified":"2014-02-16T18:49:02","modified_gmt":"2014-02-16T16:49:02","slug":"first-week-with-harry-glee-and-wands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2014\/02\/16\/first-week-with-harry-glee-and-wands\/","title":{"rendered":"FIRST WEEK WITH HARRY: GLEE (AND WANDS)<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have started teaching my elective subject \u2018Cultural Studies in English: The Harry Potter<\/em> Series\u2019 this week\u2026 and it\u2019s been a very good beginning. I have around 50 students, of which 8 (I think) are auditors (non-registered students who get no credits); they come from BA degrees such as Translation or Anthropology and three are my own MA students. The Erasmus and exchange students have started arriving on the second day and all in all, this looks very good so far.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve also added a new guest to my list of three so far: 1) a doctoral student of mine, Auba Llompart, writing her dissertation on childhood in gothic fiction for young readers; 2) a learned (Goth) colleague, Bela Cl\u00faa, who gave me the motivation I lacked to read Rowling; 3) Kika Pol, an MA student writing under my supervision her dissertation on the construction of secondary characters with a focus on Snape and, finally, 4) Jaime Oliveros, an MA student working on curses and hexes in Shakespeare \u2013who has turned out to be a Potterhead!!<\/p>\n

Here are a few funny moments. It felt very, very odd to announce that I\u2019d devote a lecture to discussing house elves, with an emphasis of course on Dobby and Kreacher. I don\u2019t know why but it\u2019s the first time I’ve thought \u2018my, this is weird\u2019 \u2013I need to think further about this. Just consider that I have already declared in public my infatuation with Sirius Black, as understanding it is a major motivation for me to teach the subject.<\/p>\n

Then, trying to teach my students how to control their fan passion for the saga, I asked them to which of the four houses they belonged: Slytherin, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw or Gryffindor. The idea was to teach them that a critical reader would question the very presence of the houses in the text, their imbalanced presentation, how Rowling encourages absurd rivalries, etc. To my surprise, they all knew which house they \u2018belong\u2019 to (yes, some Slytherins included). I, the supposed guiding critical reader, ended up taking not one but four online tests to confirm what I knew intuitively: I\u2019m Ravenclaw (like Luna Lovegood). No surprises there, as I have Mulder\u2019s \u2018I want to believe\u2019 poster in my office, Quibbler-style, and I\u2019m known for studying hard\u2026<\/p>\n

Next came the wands\u2026 I had already checked where you can buy and how much they are with a view of getting myself one as a memento of the course (Luna\u2019s, I think), but was put off in the end by the 35 euros they cost (I mean the copies of the wands in the films). I asked my students whether they owned a wand and I think 85 to 90% said yes\u2026 of course. I need to think on which day they can bring them\u2026 I told a colleague who\u2019s not at all into Harry Potter or popular fiction about this and she was quite unsympathetic about students spending that much money on the silly wands and not on books. I realised it would be simply impossible to explain to her the attraction of owning a wand or, for that matter, a lightsaber (or my little Pikachu!).<\/p>\n

I\u2019m giving the students a two-week preliminary introduction to Cultural Studies before we plunge into the text. I can already see, however, what the main challenge is going to be: understanding the sheer glee which any comment on the series brings on. We had a moment of pure enjoyment when they named their houses, a moment that I\u2019ve never enjoyed in connection with any of the literary texts I\u2019ve taught. Uninformed onlookers might have mistaken that for childishness but, then, we\u2019re all past childhood, I more than anyone else. It\u2019s something else.<\/p>\n

This glee does not incapacitate anyone to produce good critical work, as I know first hand but has to be repressed, so I need to walk a fine line between giving students the necessary academic training and giving them room to enjoy themselves. And I\u2019m highlighting this because I thought that my main challenge would be dealing with the sentimental attachment to the text (which I do share). <\/p>\n

Last year in my English Theatre class there were many intense moments and a certain ongoing impression that we were doing something transgressive, and fun, instead of boring ourselves silly with lectures. This year, and this is just the first week, I get a clear impression that, finally, students are dealing with a text that matters to them as part of their own private reading experience (the \u2018finally\u2019 is more theirs than mine). The Harry Potter<\/em> series is, evidently, a text they do want to learn more about and I can see they trust me as a guide. This is thrilling, very, very exciting.<\/p>\n

I will ask them towards the end whether other texts would have the same effect, for future subjects (Star Wars<\/em> has been mentioned). Perhaps I\u2019m the luckiest teacher in my university and, for once in my career, students agree 100% with my choices. I\u2019m well aware, though, that it may never happen again.<\/p>\n

Comments are very welcome! (Thanks!) Just remember that I check them first for spam; it might take a few days for yours to be available. VISIT MY WEB: http:\/\/gent.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have started teaching my elective subject \u2018Cultural Studies in English: The Harry Potter Series\u2019 this week\u2026 and it\u2019s been a very good beginning. I have around 50 students, of which 8 (I think) are auditors (non-registered students who get no credits); they come from BA degrees such as Translation or Anthropology and three are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-harry-potter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}