Does this count as English news? I’m leaning towards yes: there are students on campus playing a sport based on a novel that they have undoubtedly all read. Or at least I’m 99% certain they have: a few years ago my first year students and I tried to generate a list of books they had in common. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was the only one they had all finished (though they also unsuccessfully floated Catcher in the Rye, anything by Tolkien, 1984, Animal Farm, and Twilight). If you’ve ever wanted to know what a non-airborne Quidditch team looks like, spectators are welcome (practice is Wednesday nights, 6pm, see link for more). I’m thinking a departmental picnic dinner might be in the works.
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WIP
jharris124
Lady English Professor
As an kind of pedagogical experiment, I put Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone on my syllabus for the Winter term. Suffice it to say that discussions in class can get very interesting when most students have already read the novel (sometimes multiple times! And the sequels! And the movies!), and many of the students come to class having already been invested in its world for years. I saw a poster for campus Quidditich right when I was teaching it, and it ended up fostering ideas for discussion about world-building and the significance of the details that make up said fantasy world.
Looks like they’re riding Nimbus 2000s. A quidditch picnic sounds great. I’ll get my robes pressed.
By happenstance, we drove by one day at just the right time with my two kids, 6 and 10 years old, and they were enchanted to see “teenagers” make the books come alive in some way, for real. Some discussion was had about how what the “big kids” were doing differed from the books and movies, too.
Since I had just read a comment by Rowling on Quidditch, my partner and I had some discussion about how important the game is to the experience and meaning of the first book, and of the whole series. Here is the quotation:
“[Quidditch] was invented in a small hotel in Manchester after a row with my then boyfriend. I had been pondering the things that hold a society together, cause it to congregate and signify its particular character and knew I needed a sport. It infuriates men, in my experience (why is the Snitch so valuable etc.), which is quite satisfying given my state of mind when I invented it.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/interactive/2013/may/18/jk-rowling-harry-potter-philosophers-stone-annotations
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