Course Recap for January 26

J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Today at the beginning of class you took a reading quiz over the novel. After the quiz, I asked you to do a bit of writing about the popularity and value of Rowling's series and to record some of your initial thoughts and impressions about the novel. I then asked you to work with a partner to complete a character chart. You can access that document HERE. We then worked through the chart as a class and began our discussion of the novel focusing on character and the value of popular children's literature.

Critical Approaches to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: Joseph and Gruner
After the break, we spent a few minutes watching a fanvid. You can access that video HERE. I asked you to identify what arguments the creator of the fanvid was trying to make and the evidence from the film texts she used to back up her argument. We then discussed your thoughts. We talked about how the fanvid is just one (creative) way you might make a complex argument about a narrative. Creating your own fanvid is one of the possible assignments you might choose for the final writing project. I then spent some time introducing you to the final writing project for our class. You can access the assignment sheet HERE and on the left hand side of the course blog under "course documents." You should begin thinking now about what type of writing you might be interested in completing. This project is not due until the final week of class, so you have plenty of time to brainstorm.

Next we began discussing some questions related to the critical readings for today, and I asked you to point to important definitions, people, ideas, and quotes from Joseph and Gruner's critical readings. We then spent some time discussing the definition of "liminality" and how the term relates to Rowling's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone; we also identified Gruner's research question, her main argument, how she presents her argument, and important terms and passages she uses as evidence for her argument. I provided you with a handout to help you think about how you might synthesize and begin to understand a scholar's research. You can access that handout HERE.

Key Questions
Do the books have literary value, or are they just commercial products? Where is the line between literature, media, and mass-produced products and should there/can there be a line? Why are these books so popular, and what does their popularity tell us about how we are and what we, as a culture, believe ourselves to be?

How are adults portrayed in the novel? How do growth and power function in the novel? How does liminality function in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone? How are education and knowledge figured in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone? What are unschooling, didacticism, and pedagogy, and how are they related to Harry Potter?

Homework

• Read Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and ALL ANNOTATIONS (pages 7-127 of The Annotated Alice edited by Martin Gardner). If you are interested in listening to Alice in addition to reading the annotated version, you can access a free version HERE.
• Read Michelle Abate's chapter "'The Queen Had Only One Way of Settling All Difficulties... Off with His Head!': Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the Antigallows Movement" from her book Bloody Murder: The Homicide Tradition in Children's Literature (This chapter is 30 pages long, so be sure to give yourself enough time to work through it.)