Material Girls

You don't want to miss this episode, Witches!Guest K. Alexandra joins Hannah and Marcelle for a conversation about Critical Race Theory and The Goblet of Fire. Noted by some as a Harry Potter trivia queen, K. Alex is also an educator, activist and member of communities such as Black Girls Create, Black Hotties at Hogwarts, Fandom Forward, and Wizards in Space Literary Magazine. She's basically a badass who swooped in to catch us up on this academic discipline and how we can use it to think through the characterization of beloved characters like Angelina Johnson, Lee Jordan, Parvati and Padma Patil — and Hermione, just to name a few.Be sure to follow Witch, Please on Twitter and Instagram @ohwitchplease and let us know what you think of the episode through a review on Apple Podcasts. As always, you can join our Patreon for exclusive content including bonus interviews, Q&As, Watch Alongs and more — our tiers range from $2-$13! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Imagine this... imagined communities! In this episode, Hannah and Marcelle talk all about the Triwizard Tournament and the Goblet of Fire's relationship to nation states and nationalism.If you've read this book and thought, "Huh... why are they all rooting for Ireland?" you may finally find yourself with some answers. And if you've just celebrated Canada Day or the Fourth of July or you're just thinking about borders and patriotism (as one does), you won't be disappointed – Hannah and Marcelle talk all about the formation of communities (imagined or not) in and outside of the Harry Potter world through a thorough overview of scholar Benedict Anderson's work and some light bullying of him as well, (of course).Note: In this episode we refer to Uganda as the only African nation mentioned in the series, but we talk about Egypt a bit earlier on! Our mistake!Be sure to follow Witch, Please on Twitter and Instagram @ohwitchplease and let us know what you think of the episode through a review on Apple Podcasts. As always, you can join our Patreon for exclusive content including bonus interviews, Q&As, Watch Alongs and more — our tiers range from $2-$13! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Guess what Witches, it's time to jump on the Hogwarts Express because we're back with our fourth season — all about Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire!In this episode we get down and dirty with the structuralists. You may be thinking, aren't those a bunch of old white guys who thought everything could be reduced to the same component parts? To which we say, yes kind of. But as we begin a book that's all about tasks, quests, and our "hero's journey" towards victory in the Triwizard Tournament, we need some tools to help us think about plot! Tune in for this brain-bending overview of structuralism and post-structuralism through the ideas of Barthes, Foucault and Borges — and Hannah and Marcelle, of course. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Well Witches, it’s time to hop on the back of the nearest hippogriff and fly into the sunset, because we’re officially wrapping up Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Oh how time flies when you’re examining disability, metaphor, and the prison industrial complex! It's almost as if time is... a construct? (Kidding, kidding, physicists please don't come for us.)We spend this episode sorting Harry Potter characters into Dungeons and Dragons classes, interrogating the magic of boggarts, and bracing ourselves for another round of Marcelle's Devastating Fun Facts. Be sure to follow Witch, Please on Twitter and Instagram @ohwitchplease and let us know what you think of the episode through a review on Apple Podcasts. As always, you can join our Patreon for exclusive content including bonus interviews, Q&As, Watch Alongs and more — our tiers range from $2-$13! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Special guest, poet and educator Mercedes Eng, joins us to take a closer look at Azkaban, the carceral logic of the wizard world, and how it reflects our own ideas about monstrosity, punishment, and innocence. We take a look at restorative and transformative ideas of justice and debate whether the nightmarish portrayal of Azkaban is a radical call for prison abolition or an insidious device meant to make our own prison system look reasonable. Content warning: this episode discusses trauma linked to incarceration, settler colonialism, racism, police brutality and sexual assault.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Greetings, Witches!Our last two episode on Animal Studies and Disability Studies laid the groundwork for this week's episode all about how to read Remus Lupin and his Lycanthropy. In an ebook released on Pottermore, J.K. Rowling stated that she meant Lupin's werewolf condition to be a metaphor for AIDS. This week we look at the way that metaphors of illness circulate ideologies about those who are ill - implying certain truths about their worthiness, deviance, and threat to society. We discuss specifically the history of AIDS and its metaphors, and examine how reading Lupin as a character with AIDS reinforces rather than challenges dangerous narratives about queer and disabled folks.Be sure to follow Witch, Please on Twitter and Instagram @ohwitchplease and let us know what you think of the episode through a review on Apple Podcasts. As always, you can join our Patreon for exclusive content including bonus interviews, Q&As, Watch Alongs and more — our tiers range from $2-$13!Resources:How She Read by Chantal Gibson Illness as Metaphor + AIDS and its Metaphors by Susan Sontag Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Greetings, Witches!In this episode, we're once again applying a disability studies lens to the wizarding world. This time, we're looking at questions of access, accommodation, and community support for characters we might read as disabled in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. We're joined by disabled poet and visual artist, Tea Gerbeza, who is an MFA in Writing candidate at the University of Saskatchewan. With Tea, we dive deep into the interpretation of Remus Lupin as a disabled character whose existence and bodily difference as a werewolf marks him in sharp contrast to normative wizarding society. We explore alternate futures for Lupin where, instead of social isolation and mistreatment, Lupin is met with the resources and accommodation he needs. We discuss the vital importance of community support for disabled people that goes beyond the limitations of formal institutions. For Tea, to read Lupin as disabled is to resist the failure of this text to meaningfully include disabled perspectives, and we invite you to join us in this expansive, resistant reading!Be sure to follow Witch, Please on Twitter and Instagram @ohwitchplease and let us know what you think of the episode through a review on Apple Podcasts. As always, you can join our Patreon for exclusive content including bonus interviews, Q&As, Watch Alongs and more — our tiers range from $2-$13! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Witches, meet us at the edge of the Forbidden Forest.We're returning to the rich territory of animal studies to understand the limitations of human vs. animal hierarchies. We'll spend some time with marginal figures in the wizarding world who cross the human/animal divide, challenge social and political norms, and invite us into new ways of being. In particular, we'll be spending quite some time with Remus Lupin and his fellow marauders. We'll also discuss how systemic dehumanization, or the rendering of certain people as animalistic or less than human, is a tool of state violence.Content note: Throughout this episode, there are references to historical and contemporary instances of racism, violence, and dehumanization as enacted upon Black people and Indigenous people.Be sure to follow Witch, Please on Twitter and Instagram @ohwitchplease and let us know what you think of the episode through a review on Apple Podcasts. As always, you can join our Patreon for exclusive content including bonus interviews, Q&As, Watch Alongs and more — our tiers range from $2-$13! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Greetings, Witches!As always, we're eternally grateful for the time you spend listening with us. In this episode, we're unpacking the mechanics of time and time-travel as they play out in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. We identify the connections between western time-travel narratives and the industrial revolution and the infinitely insidious force of capitalism. We plunge into the philosophical implications of this book's particular kind of time-travel narrative, which desires to predict the future and to change the past. How fixed is our reality? How much agency do we have over our fates? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Attention, class!This is the episode all of you superbly studious witches have been waiting for! We draw upon our own expertise as longtime students and educators to discuss the, frankly, wild and unpredictable pedagogical approaches of Hogwarts faculty. Have any Hogwarts faculty managed to create affirming and generative learning environments, even within a school that routinely places students in dangerous circumstances, wields discipline unevenly, and lacks student support services of any kind? How can looking at Hogwarts help us to understand our own educational institutions and our place within them (or outside of them)? Ready your quills and refer to your books, witches, because we've got a lot to say on this topic!Be sure to follow Witch, Please on Twitter and Instagram @ohwitchplease and let us know what you think of the episode through a review on Apple Podcasts. As always, you can join our Patreon for exclusive content including bonus interviews, Q&As, Watch Alongs and more — our tiers range from $2-$13! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.