Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T17:30:57.393Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Wizarding in the Classroom: Teaching Harry Potter and Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 September 2009

Stephen Deets
Stephen Deets
Affiliation:
Babson College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article describes teaching a course called Harry Potter and Politics. Focusing on aspects of political culture, the class tackled themes of identity, institutional behavior, and globalization. Teaching Harry Potter has several benefits. Students are both familiar with the wizarding world and yet have enough distance to examine it dispassionately. The book is driven by ethnic conflict, political power struggles, and dysfunctional bureaucracies. Finally, there is an academic literature on the books. Beyond Harry Potter, teaching politics through popular culture is not only natural for addressing political culture, but taps into the ways undergraduates are increasingly experiencing politics.

Type
The Teacher
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 42 , Issue 4 , October 2009 , pp. 741 - 744
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barton, Benjamin. 2006. “Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy.” Michigan Law Review 104 (May): 1523–37.Google Scholar
Bauman, Zygmunt. 1989. Modernity and the Holocaust. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. 2006. Imperial Life in the Emerald City. Knopf: New York.Google Scholar
Fliter, John. 2008. “Using Classic and Contemporary Literature to Explore Themes in Law and Politics.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the APSA Teaching and Learning Conference, San Jose, CA, February 22.Google Scholar
McAdam, Douglas. 1990. Freedom Summer. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nafisi, Azar. 2003. Reading Lolita in Tehran. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Neumann, Iver, and Nexon, Daniel, eds. 2006. Harry Potter and International Politics. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.Google Scholar
Rowlings, J. K. 2007. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. New York: Arthur A. Levine Books.Google Scholar
Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1995. Anti-Semite and Jew. New York: Shocken Books.Google Scholar
Whitebrook, Maureen. 1993. “Only Connect: Politics and Literature 10 Years Later, 1982–1992.” PS: Political Science and Politics 26 (2): 257–62.Google Scholar
Zuckert, Catherine. 1995. “Why Political Scientists Want to Study Literature.” PS: Political Science and Politics 28 (2): 189–90.Google Scholar