Actually, the title for this post should refer to Hermione Granger since she is the one doing the smashing of patriarchy in this amusing and insightful take on feminism in the world of Harry Potter. The language is not safe for work.
People may have wondered why spend so much time thinking about what pop culture says about international relations. They have have pondered whether dedicating entire class sessions to Harry Potter...
If there is one bit of recent pop culture that will have enduring value as a common reference in the classroom, it is almost certainly Harry Potter.* Since his fictional 33rd birthday was this...
Slate posted a piece on the academic study of pop culture. It found that academics studied Buffy the Vampire Slayer most. Well, actually, no, it found that more folks studied the Buffy than the...
I will be on a panel at 1.45pm in Indigo A with the following description:There has been a growing body of work in world politics that relies on or analyzes fictional narratives. To what extent can cultutal phenomena like Battlestar Galactica or Harry Potter be used as for pedagogical purposes in the classroom? How useful are such narratives as data points to either explicate or substantiate theoretical claims in world politics? This roundtable weighs the costs and benefits of using popular culture narratives inside the classroom and in publications.Charli Carpenter will be discussing her...
Foreign Policy's latest foray into the nexus between science fiction and political reality is a lively sketch on post-conflict reconstruction, Harry Potter style. Written by experts on the topic from the Marine Corps War College, Human Rights Watch and the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, the key point is this: though the "story" ends when the bad guys are vanquished (be they Deatheaters or Saddam Hussein's forces) is is then that the real battle begins.Former U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre and retired Gen. Gordon Sullivan have described four pillars of post-conflict...
In the waning days of classes, one of my colleagues asked a student if she’d been among those celebrating outside of the White House the night that President Obama announced the killing of Osama Bin-Laden. “Of course,” she responded, “I mean, they got Voldemort!” For many readers who aged along with its titular hero, the Harry Potter series inextricably intertwines with the war on terrorism. This connection stems from more than a mere accident of timing. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000) provides readers their first glimpse of the Death Easters as they carry out a terror attack...
One draft of a piece that will not be appearing anytime soon. I will post the other version, a strategic-studies analysis of the outcome of the Deathly Hallows, later on.The sixth Harry Potter film, the Half-Blood Prince (2009), opens with Harry standing side-by-side with his mentor, recently reinstated Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore. Blinding flashbulbs illuminate Harry’s vacant stare, rendering the scene a literal, as well as figurative, flashback to the immediate aftermath of the Battle of the Department of Mysteries, in which three clandestine forces clashed within the Ministry of...
Amanda Marcotte (via Zack Beauchamp):"Harry isn't a nerd," I said, "Harry is a jock." I mean, Harry has an existential crisis that gives him some depth, but social outcast and/or geek he's not. The opposite, in fact. I realized then that the "band of misfits" theme has so much power over the American imagination (maybe not the British, which could explain Rowling's choices) that people just sort of shove Harry and his friends into that mold, and then rely on a handful of rationalizations for it---Harry wears glasses, Hermione is a bookworm, Ron is a redhead---in order for that theory to make...
We saw HPatDHpt2 (as the young'ns are calling it) this evening. It was quite good: action-packed, emotionally satisfying, and all that. We sat next to a group of hipster teenagers who were extremely psyched throughout the whole thing--they clapped, they cheered, and were very upset when my daughter interjected commentary ("That's a lot of Death Eaters!"). This provided an important reminder of how a whole generation of kids grew up with -- or, more accurately, aged along with -- the Harry Potter novels. Anyway, I may be doing a review for a "real" online outlet this weekend; I'll post a link...
Alyssa Rosenberg has a good discussion of the anti-torture themes in the Harry Potter series. But she neglects two other ways in which J.K. Rowling critiques the US conduct of the war on terror: Azkaban and arbitrary detention. Harry's disdain for the ministry in The Half-Blood Prince focuses on their detention of Stan Shunpike in Azkaban -- Stan's obvious innocence doesn't deter Minister of Magic Rufus Scrimgeour from scapegoating the young man as part of his effort to create the illusion of security in the Wizarding world. Indeed, Azkaban itself could be any number of soul-devouring...
Abi Southerland on the current popularity of Zombies:I mentioned this puzzle to my better half, who happens to be in the middle of a reread of World War Z. His answer? ... You can have a fascinating story about a single zombie in a world of humans or the last human in a world of zombies. You can do one on one human-zombie interactions, or set entire armies against each other. They work differently as individuals (stupid and clumsy) and in crowds (lucky by means of what sheer numbers can do with probability theory). A group of them is as impersonal as a natural disaster; a single one is as...