Potter Pundits Summer School Webinar Oxford’s Beatrice Groves Joins Me for Live Q&A with Summer School Students

August 14, 2017 by 1 Comment

I hinted in yesterday’s videos that there was a special guest possibility for the live webinar I’ll be doing this Thursday with those who have registered for our week long Potter Pundits Summer School. Forget the hints! I can confirm that Beatrice Groves, Research Fellow and Lecturer at Trinity College, Oxford University, and author of the ground-breaking Literary Allusion in Harry Potter, will be joining me then to answer the questions of Summer School students.

Ever want to talk with an Oxford don about your favorite books? Forgive me for thinking this may be your one opportunity to do just that. And here’s the bizarre thing. Dr. Groves is as easy-going and friendly as she is brilliant, and, folks, check out my review of her book on Amazon; she’s stellar brilliant.

And all you have to do to join us is register for Summer School! I’ll be sending out webinar invitations Wednesday to everyone who has signed up. Be on that list! (The webinar will be live on Thursday at 3:00 PM Central time; those who can’t make that time can send questions in advance and everyone registered will get a recording of the conversation.) See you then!

Filed Under: Potter Pundits Summer School

‘Reading, Writing, Rowling’ Podcast — Hogwarts Professors in Roanoke!

August 14, 2017 by Leave a Comment

Kathryn McDaniel’s new podcast at MuggleNet.com ‘Reading, Writing, Rowling: Imagination and Fiction in the Age of Harry Potter’ is available today! Her first show features the four HogwartsProfessors — John Granger, Louise Freeman, Elizabeth Baird-Hardy, and Emily Strand — and Lana Whited, the Minister of Magical Education at the Roanoke Potter Festival, published Potter Pundit of renown, and professor at Ferrum College. We got together the night before the Roanoke Festival to talk about our ‘Top Twenty Moments’ from the series in celebration of the 20th Anniversary of Philosopher’s Stone‘s publication.

Professor Strand made a delightful short video of the recording session, a Potter Postcard,  you can watch here — or just jump right in to the podcast fun! Be sure to subscribe to ‘Reading, Writing, Rowling’; Katy has already recorded two more shows with me as sidekick that have delightful guests and first class conversation about Harry Potter. Leave a comment below and thanks in advance for sharing the link on your preferred social media portal!

A big thank you to Amy at MuggleNet, to Travis Prinzi and Emily Strand for the music, and to Emma Nicholson for editing the show and writing the beautiful theme song lyrics! Woot!

Filed Under: Reading Writing Rowling Podcast

Registration is Now Open for Potter Pundits Summer School: Sign Up Today! First Class? Harry and Literary Alchemy

August 13, 2017 by 1 Comment

Register for ‘Potter Pundit Summer School’ Now! Totally Free. One week only, four free talks and a live webinar with limited seating — don’t delay, right?

Please sign up and share the news with your friends by email and social media. Thanks in advance for spreading the news.

PDFs of the transcript for my Literary Alchemy lecture and of a complete bibliography with 47 alchemical guides are posted at the first talk’s web page. Once you register, you’ll be taken there automatically. See you at Potter Pundits Summer School!

Filed Under: Literary Alchemy, Potter Pundits Summer School

Seven Questions for ‘Strike’ TV Talent

August 9, 2017 by 11 Comments

I was asked by my friends at MuggleNet for questions to ask “the talent” of the BBC teevee show Strike which premieres tomorrow. Here are the seven questions I sent in after polling the HogwartsProfessor talent. What would you have asked?

(1) Cormoran Strike is an imposing physical presence who is not handsome; he’s described as a hulk (not hunk!) who has “pube hair” and looks like a heavyweight boxer resembling Beethoven. Why in the world did you choose Tom Burke, a beautiful man who is relatively short and decidedly svelte, to play this part? You’ve cast a brilliant actor and leopard to play the part of a rhino, no?

(2) The Strike fandom, small as it is relative to the Kingdom of Potter, reads these mysteries as wonderfully satisfying mysteries in themselves and as Rowling commentaries on the parallel Potter books and her experiences as a writer and celebrity. Have you in your study of these books to prepare for the making of these series discussed the latter amongst yourselves?

(3) Rowling is definitely writing the series as she did Harry Potter with respect to writing books that also serve as chapters in the larger, over-arching mystery. Instead of the back story about the Dark Lord, of course, here we are learning book by book, more about the death of Strike’s mother Leda, the involvement of his father Jonny Rokeby the rock star, Robin’s past and her relationship with Matt, Cormoran’s history with Mad Charlotte, and information about the explosion in Afghanistan that took his leg. Rowling famously shared Snape’s back story with Alan Rickman so he knew where his character was headed and what his motivations were; has she tipped her hand to any of you?

(4) Why teevee? No knock on the quality of small screen production values, which now are as good or better than cinema, but there’s so much more of an audience globally for films and it’s not as if Rowling’s works have not been successfully adapted into blockbusters. Any idea why the Rowling team elected to go small when going blockbuster large would have meant exciting millions more potential readers about the series? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike

Choice, Free Will, and The Prophecy

August 7, 2017 by 12 Comments

PDF Transcript of Choice, Free Will, and the Trelawney Prophecy

Link to Potter Pundits Online Survey: “What One Question Would You Ask Me?”

Exciting times! Next week is the launch of a fifteen years effort, online classes for serious readers of Harry Potter, classes that are affordable, interactive, accessible, and even alchemical, and I am over the top delighted that it is finally happening.

Today’s video entry is about another meme in the way we think of Harry Potter — that the Hogwarts Saga is a celebration of choice as the gauge of character and token of our free will to shape our lives and events — and how that is certainly true but still deceptive without some serious qualifications. Please let me know what you think in the comment boxes below!

AND! Because we’re just about to start filming the Potter Pundit Summer School free classes and live Q&A webinar midstream that will launch next Sunday (they’ll be available by subscription only for two weeks at PotterPundits.com; I’ll explain how that works in the next few days), I want to be sure I’m talking about what you want to discuss, I have put together a 20 multiple choice question survey. I sufficiently eager and grateful for your prompt feedback that I’m offering a $100 Amazon gift card I’ll be giving away in a drawing from the names of those who fill it out (it takes less than five minutes).

Click the link above or right here to take the survey and to let me know what you want to hear in the free online classes that will be available starting next Sunday. Affordable, interactive, accessible, even alchemical Hogwarts Magic! At last! Thank you again for your help in making sure these first classes answer the questions you have.

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes