Cos-play gone wild? Video games that draw blood? A satire street-drama about our obsession with sports, especially at major colleges and State Universities? You decide.
‘Hogwarts Preparatory Academy’ Online with Joel Hunter
October 23, 2014 by 1 Comment
Independent scholar Joel Hunter, formerly of Arizona State University’s Barrett Honors College, has launched a new venture called ‘Hogwarts Preparatory Academy.’ This will certainly interest HogPro readers because it features this Potter Pundit of note’s reflections not only on the Hogwarts Saga but also popular story. This week, for example, he reviewed the film ‘Whisper of the Heart.’ Check it out!
Dr Hunter has also ventured into guiding students online with success in an Honors Seminar. That happens at his name website — JoelHunterPhD.com. Read more about these tutorials — ‘Mastering the Human Event’ — here.
Elizabeth Baird-Hardy and I have both been to Arizona State during Prof Hunter’s tenure there and I had the pleasure of catching up with him at St Andrews University at the Potter Conference in 2012. His talk then on the Proppian analysis of Harry Potter using fairy tale elements was a highlight and is a featured piece in the paper collection from that conference that is about to be published. More on that in the coming weeks!
Nicholas Carr: The Glass Cage — Automation and Us
October 21, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Nicholas Carr’s book The Shallows is the most important book I’ve read this century. That’s a recommendation. Though I disagree with his premise that Gutenberg-brain is the optimal human state (it’s remarkably deficient in wisdom and risibly confident in rationalist givens), his is the clearest voice of alarm about the changes occurring in our capacities for thinking and understanding consequent to our adoption of intellectual technologies.
The talk above was given, incredibly, at Google’s west coast campus, a site and company criticized in merciless fashion in The Shallows. Please listen for a challenge to your thoughts about technology and reading — and please reflect on your relationships with your Smart phone, PC, and GPS system. Hat tip to Stephen S!
Carson Newman: On Truth, Beauty, and Why Reading Matters
October 20, 2014 by 5 Comments
I spoke last Thursday morning to a packed Baptist Church at Carson-Newman University, just outside Knoxville, Tennessee. It was the third in a series of lectures sponsored by the University for their students on the subject of ‘truth and beauty.’ My spin was about the internet, the central place of story (and reading stories specifically), and one answer to ‘the mystery of fiction.’
The students and faculty were as kind and welcoming as their campus is beautiful, which is really saying something, especially as the Blue Ridge was exploding in color. If you enjoy this talk, I’m confident you have had only a small fraction of the pleasure I enjoyed in good company and conversation at Carson Newman. Cheers to you — and thanks to Alison, Macy, and April at Carson Newman for making my stay as pleasant as it was!
It’s Time! Harry Potter Halloween Party Planning Ideas
September 29, 2014 by 1 Comment
My parents told me, in front of a group of college friends as I recall, that as a child I began counting down the days to my birthday and Halloween which followed hours later, as soon as October was approaching. As a sugar addict in need of a 12 Step Program back in the day, I must have been looking forward to the sucrose blitz at the end of the tenth month that would make me fly like a kite well into November (with the hypoglycemic crash, alas, that lasted until Thanksgiving…).
My mother, God bless her memory, sewed the greatest Halloween costumes for me and my two brothers, efforts that required much more than day-of-event last minute planning. So maybe my anticipatory excitement in late September reflected her enthusiasm as much as it caused her to buy fabric and face paints?
I’ll never know. I am pretty sure if there had been a Harry Potter mania in the 60’s that we would have had the best costumes for Halloween and maybe even a theme party at a birthday. Because I would have loved the big books obsessively, right? And mom would have been all over that with encouragement and shared text enthusiasm.
I do have a pretty good idea what my bedroom would have looked like if Harry and I had been childhood friends. Ideal James sent me a link to 33 Cheap and Easy Ways to Throw an Epic Harry Potter Halloween Party and I suspect I would have done my best to express my fascination with maybe 30 of these possibilities. Definitely the glue-gun crafted wands and Dementor light shades. Lumos and Nox postings on the switches and floating candles? Oh, yeah. A must.
My daughter Sarah and her college roommate decorated their top deck flat at UChicago (aka ‘Chicagwarts’) as the Hufflepuff Common Room. The only thing they were missing from this party catalog was the envelopes-from-the-fireplace number. Which, yes, is a WOW. I’m half-hoping my children see this and get excited about a Halloween Party this year so we can put together some of these favors. There’s a month to get ready, right?
File this under ‘Shared Text,’ because, no, an Anna Karenina or Mary Poppins themed party just isn’t going to have the gags and tricks that everyone will recognize and enjoy… More Harry Party party ideas here and here. Hat tip, James!
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