In his classic An Experiment in Criticism, C.S. Lewis posited that one of the criteria by which a book might be judged “good” was its ability to hold up and produce new insights under multiple readings. For example, the mystery novel that is never touched again once one knows “whodunnit” is not good literature, while the “old friend” one reads again and again (as Lewis did Jane Austen’s novels, apparently annually) are worthy of attention, regardless of their status as “literature” by other tests. Pepperdine University professor and HogPro pal James Thomas has proven again that the Hogwarts adventures, along with their three ancillary texts, count as “good literature” by this standard, with Rowling Revisited: Return Trips to Harry, Fantastic Beasts, Quidditch, and Beedle the Bard (Zossima, 2010). If you haven’t taken a ramble with this delightful volume, you should, and if you have already, then perhaps a repeat trip to this book is in order before Hollywood destroys, um, I mean, adapts, one of the books covered!
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Well worth the Repeat Business: Dr. James Thomas’s Return Foray to Rowling’s Wizarding World
Potted Potter Professor
July 15th, 2012. It was our first trip to New York City: myself, my mother, my teenage daughter and our Spanish exchange student. I hadn’t planned on seeing Potted Potter when I trekked up to the TKTS booth in Times Square to try to score some same-day Broadway tickets. But when it became clear we were not going to be able to see Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory playing Jimmy Stewart in Harvey, the Potted Potter show caught my eye. After a quick cell phone call to make sure the Spanish student was familiar enough with the series to appreciate it (she was, having seen all the movies), I bought tickets for the 5 PM show that night, in the Little Shubert Theater.
The premise of the show is that all seven Potter books are encapsulated into 70 minutes. I had a brief twinge of guilt at the word “unauthorized” nature, wondering how two guys, however funny, were managing to make money off J. K. Rowling’s creation without paying her for it. But, I had also seen some rave reviews and even read the rumor that they had inadvertently turned away Rowling herself from one of their sold out 2006 shows. I figured Ms. Rowling could look after her own interests and, if there was any infringement, she’d already had plenty of time to sue, so I decided to just enjoy it.
Shared Text: The Several Wizarding World Allusions Made During the University of Virginia’s Summer Leadership Crisis
Not all Harry Potter comparisons by higher education critics take nine years to appear in print. (See the preceding article by Elizabeth Baird Hardy for one that did.)
Like a lot of professors in Virginia, I followed with intense interest the Board of Visitor’s unexpected June 10th dismissal of University of Virginia (UVa) President Teresa Sullivan, and the sixteen days of protests by faculty, students and alums. The debacle ended with Dr. Sullivan’s reinstatement on June 26th. The Chronicle of Higher Education, happily a bit quicker on the draw with this story, has a detailed summary of the events here.
Allusions to our favorite Shared Text were quickly popping up all over social media: Twitter, Facebook, and commentary on online news article by people following the story. Rector Helen Dragas was compared to virtually every bad guy in the series, from Lucius Malfoy to Lord Voldemort to Dolores Umbridge. I also spotted at least one Hunger Games illusion, wherein it was suggested that Dragas and Sullivan fight it out in the Arena to settle their dispute.
Most of the Harry Potter allusions popped up in tweets or in comments on news articles, hard to document with URLs. But combining the #UVA hashtag with the key words brings quite a few up from the Twitter archives. A few sample Tweets:
Harry Potter Research Assistance Needed
Friend of this blog, Dr, Joel Hunter of the Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University, is conducting some research and would like input from the serious readers here. In his paper for an upcoming conference, Dr. Hunter was going to mention the preferences readers have for some of the Hogwarts Adventures, and while we’ve all heard anecdotes about which books are readers’ least/most favorites, he wanted a more thoughtful study. So he created this very simple survey for readers to rank the books from most to least favorite (it’s great if you love them all; just decide which ones you are more likely to crawl back into when you re-visit Harry). If you have read all seven books at least once, please participate in the survey and feel free to pass it along to others who would like to participate. Please only take the survey once (I know some of you want to make Chamber of Secrets number 1 at all costs–restrain yourselves!). Thanks so much for your feedback and for taking part in our on-going goals of research and scholarship!
Pubcast tonight on Middle Earth Radio Network
Join Dave Kale, George Naylor, and yours truly for a live pubcast as we look back over at the Harry Potter events of 2011!
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