John Anthony Dunne: Well, Emma and Professor bid me thanks so much for joining us.
Emma Brandel (she/her): Thank you.
Julye Bidmead: Yeah. We're glad to be here.
John Anthony Dunne: So I'm really really excited for this conversation on educational accommodation and specifically thinking about educational accommodation in the light of the representation of squibs in the Harry Potter Series.
John Anthony Dunne: and i'm really excited for this, because I got to hear both of you give a presentation in October at the Chestnut Hill College, Harry Potter Conference, and the 2 of you gave this wonderful presentation, and one want to hear a little bit about it now about this presentation that you go, that that that
John Anthony Dunne: about this presentation that you both gave related to a class that that you, Professor, bid me taught, and this wonderful assignment about this reading guide that Emma and and and a few of your classmates that you produced.
John Anthony Dunne: So let's begin hearing a little bit about this class that you set up, Professor, bid Mead and this wonderful reading guide that you put together with your classmates.
Julye Bidmead: hey? I'll start by talking a little bit about the class. It's a class on religion, race, gender, and basically any sort of identity in Harry Potter. And it's a class I've been teaching as a travel course for 10 years. Now, however, with Covid
Julye Bidmead: for 2 years we weren't able to teach the class, so Emma and some of her classmates.
Julye Bidmead: We're very lucky because I decided once we couldn't travel. I would teach the class in person, and let me just
Julye Bidmead: preface this by saying it's a January class, so that it is only me for 4 weeks during January. Normally we travel to London, and we have classes at our university. But when Emma took the class. When she did this assignment
Julye Bidmead: we put it together as a brand new class for 4 weeks, where basically we did nothing but talk about Harry Potter for 4 or 5 h a day, looking at issues of race, of gender.
Julye Bidmead: transphobia, homophobia, disability, ableism, ages of everything that you can think of, and the class, as I said normally, it's a travel course where we go to London, so the assignments are quite a bit different. But in this course
Julye Bidmead: one of the things that we came up with
Julye Bidmead: to, because we had been talking for so often in the class
Julye Bidmead: with these students, who pretty much grew up with Harry Potter love Harry Potter. But
Julye Bidmead: the big elephant in the room is J. K. Rowling and her stance on Trans. Trans. Women or Trans. People in general, and the question kept coming up, how can we still love this material, but have a problem with the author? And the students said amongst themselves.
Julye Bidmead: Wouldn't it be great if there was some sort of reading guide for new parents to use with their children when they introduced them to Harry Potter, but also point out all the problems that are there.
Julye Bidmead: So with that idea in mind.
Julye Bidmead: I told the class, if they would like to have an alternative assignment, not the final assignment that I had originally intended
Julye Bidmead: that they could work on a group project in their house. Let me just step back. Each of the students are divided into houses just like the Harry Potter House, and of course Emma's in the Raven Claw House, which
Julye Bidmead: tends to have most of the all of us, the people that are really academic nerds, if you will, Anyway, in the Raven Cloth house, Emma and her classmates decided they wanted to take on this project, and this project was design a reading guide for
Julye Bidmead: young parents, young children to use when they're first introducing
Julye Bidmead: the Harry Potter books, and for them to work on it as a group project. I gave them very little guidance other than to use the articles that we've looked at in the class and to say about 20 pages.
Okay.
Julye Bidmead: I will let Emma
Julye Bidmead: Raven Claw Pref here to take it from there to tell you how this turned into the reading guy that you heard at the conference. Okay, Emma.
Emma Brandel (she/her): Yeah. So there were about 6 or 7 of us raven clause that got together, and I remember we just started a big document because we decided at the very end of class right before we were about to go home for the day. I think it was a Wednesday or Thursday, and class ends on Thursday. Yeah, let's like get together. Let's share a document, and we just started putting down all the books.
Emma Brandel (she/her): and I think we had asked before we left. Can we do the movies, too, because there are certain things that we notice that we're changes to the script, or changes in how things are represented or portrayed. And so we were on the document, and the document with bullet points was getting longer and longer and longer, because there were 7 of us who, I think individually, probably could have done a 20 page
Emma Brandel (she/her): assignment, and so we expanded it further. We did first, child. We talked a little bit about that. We did the fantastic beast movies, and we did the potter more website and also Jk Rowling's twitter. And so it ended up being, I think, 97 pages.
Emma Brandel (she/her): And so each section we split up the books. Originally. Each of us was gonna do one book, but that was just not enough for us, so we expanded to do some movies. So I think we had 2 people doing the movies, split them 4 and 4, I think 3 of us did the book. So I did the first 3 books. Someone did 4 and 5, and another person did 6 and 7,
Emma Brandel (she/her): and then somebody did Potter more, and somebody did the fantastic piece movies. And then another person did. First, child, I think that's 7. My math is right might be.
Emma Brandel (she/her): somebody might have doubled up somewhere, and we decided for each section. We would start with 4 core subsections for each book, for each movie, etc. And then, if there's something that's unique to that, we would split off from there. So, for example, all of the books we would have a section on religion
Emma Brandel (she/her): because I was a big. We spent a whole week on religion.
Emma Brandel (she/her): We would do race slash, colonialism, slash racism, slash, anti-semitism, but race as a big category, and then we would do gender slash, sexuality, and then feminism
Emma Brandel (she/her): and women's studies. And then, you know, for example, chamber of Secrets. I did a special section just on disability, because that's where we first are introduced to the I idea of squibs, and I think there were a couple of others. There was consent with poly juice potion later on in book 5 or 6,
Emma Brandel (she/her): I think. Book 6. And so
Emma Brandel (she/her): yeah, so that we started with that, and we just expanded from there, and it just kind of came together. We were doing a lot of it asynchronously, and we just kept having more discussions in class, and it was crazy because I remember so many times
Emma Brandel (she/her): I would have thought I finished my section on book one, and I was moving on to book 2, and then you would. Someone would say something so great in class, and I just took a little note of it, and I had to go home and add it to my section. So it was really fun. I mean it just wrote itself, I think so. That was one of my favorite
Emma Brandel (she/her): experiences in any class ever honestly. And I remember going into the the project. I remember thinking like
Emma Brandel (she/her): this is probably the most applicable
Emma Brandel (she/her): project I've ever worked on to my own life because I was one of the ones in class that had mentioned. Like. I want to read these books to my kids some day.
Emma Brandel (she/her): 20 years in the future. But I don't know how different the world would be in 20 years. I really don't know how to even broach the topic. So for me, I also wanted to not just point out the problems, but also point out some of the good things that
Emma Brandel (she/her): you might not get a cultural context for being a a kid in the year 2,040. You know some of the concepts
Emma Brandel (she/her): that are there, neutral or good, as well, you know, like what was the idea of a strong female character in the 2,000 s growing up? What was what was the kind of female archetype character that I looked up to in my childhood that might not be as relevant to my children. Someday. So that was something I also wanted to bring into it.
John Anthony Dunne: Stan and and Chris just want to welcome both of you here after they've just told a little bit about the project where you, Chris, were you able to hear enough of that?
Chris Porter: Yeah. So I was able to hear most of that. I was gonna say my check good, or
Chris Porter: it sounds a little different than it usually does. But if it's
Chris Porter: zoom on, ipad is not.
John Anthony Dunne: Oh, okay, okay, I'm. Just gonna try it quickly, checking no no worries, no worries man.
Chris Porter: Oh, is that
Chris Porter: working better? It it? I think it is better. I think it is.
Chris Porter: Yeah, so I have to turn off my headphones to be able to hear that.
Chris Porter: Oh, okay, yeah, it is a lot more statically, I think, when you're talking now, like I, I don't know that's through my headphones. I'll. When I ask a question
Chris Porter: i'll ask it using the microphone, and then I won't be able to hear any response for about 5 s before
John Anthony Dunne: I'm. I'm a white at the moment. So it's okay. I I think the most natural follow up is to ask, You know what is a squib? And how are they treated, etc., to get more into the disability thing? I'm happy to ask that. But I also think another natural follow up is just to ask if you guys are publishing this. So I I
John Anthony Dunne: How about I asked the follow up about. I depend to publish this, and then either of you to stand, Chris. You could jump in on the Tell us what to with. You know the kind of more context to set up this conversation a little bit more. Okay.
John Anthony Dunne: Yeah, Thank you so much for that rundown on this wonderful reading guide that you produced, Emma for Professor, bid me do you have any plans to publish this at any point. Has it been published already? Can our listeners access it anywhere?
Julye Bidmead: No, it hasn't been published yet, and we have. We do have plans to publish it the first time we ever presented it was at the Harry Potter Conference in October, and we we got such great feedback from many of the scholars there that they really said we need to publish this, so I've started to look at it, not now as a class assignment, but as something that we can publish right now. There's a number of
Julye Bidmead: things that have to be changed for publication, but Emma and I have kind of talked about this informally, and we would like to publish it, only using the material for the first book for the books, the the movies, cursed child. All that other stuff can be worked on later, but we think the books are the most important.
Julye Bidmead: The second thing is.
Julye Bidmead: and
Julye Bidmead: your professor so you know how this is what you're looking at from a student paper that might be an a plus paper is probably not going to make it in the publishing world, so we'll have to go back and edit it. And then another part of it is. Some of it is written by students, and I don't have their permission yet to give their
Julye Bidmead: to put this out there because of her requirements. So Emma and I have decided that in our spare time Haha! We are going to sit down and rework, especially. Emma wrote the like the first 3 chapters, which are the first 3 books and the introduction, and that the 2 of us are going to work on it together, taking the ideas that some of the students use, and of course i'm going to credit them and give them credit, but we are actually going to rework it and write it now where it's going to be published. I don't know some of the people at the Harry Potter
Julye Bidmead: Conference are helping us to find the correct venues, so, as soon as I can make it available to you, i'll go ahead and let you do that. But definitely we have. I had told the students
Julye Bidmead: in class. If they do this reading guide, and if I think it's appropriate, I will find a place for them to present it and publish it, and we did find a place to present it and publish it at the at least at the Harry Potter Conference. So maybe hopefully, by next year it'll be in good enough forum and to get it out there. And of course there's all a lot of venues. We could publish it online.
Julye Bidmead: We could self-publish it. I we just haven't gotten there yet. So anyway, there'll be something.
Julye Bidmead: I hope, that answers your question.
Okay.
John Anthony Dunne: Stan.
Stanley Ng: Yeah. So you know, thank you for coming on to this. Podcast is just amazing here about just the work you've been doing. I I remember reading even a form like an older article from Chapman University. I used to kind of reside in that area on how what you guys did with Disney and everything, and especially you're seeing now with some of the chains that are happening in the Park as well just
Stanley Ng: within the last couple of days. Right? Yeah. And just seeing the work that you're doing, it's just it's just great to to be an advocate for for those who who are marginalized those who are unseen.
Stanley Ng: I so you know. Just tell me a little bit more now. I'm not a Harry Potter fanatic. Here I may be a Disney fan, but that's not the focus of our podcast here today. But tell us a little bit more about the you know, Squib, or tell me you know. I'm someone who doesn't know this. Maybe some reliability may not be familiar with. Tell us a little bit about squid a little bit of context here. And and why are you focusing on Swiss
Stanley Ng: specifically, especially in the work that you're doing?
Julye Bidmead: I'll jump in real quick here. And I was the one that did the Disney stuff at Capman, because, prior to the Harry Potter class, I was teaching a class in Disney
Julye Bidmead: and some of the students that were in that Disney class said, let's do this with Harry Potter, and so suddenly it mur it morphed into Harry Potter. So I was using some of the same ideas which just goes to show
Julye Bidmead: that popular culture is so important in today's world. One of the things that through the Disney class and through this class students learn to really look at these issues
Julye Bidmead: and look at them, and kind of step back and see them in a fictional world. It makes it so much easier for them to see them in the real world. And this is going to segue into Emma talking about what squibs are, because suddenly they noticed
Julye Bidmead: squibs
Julye Bidmead: in the Harry Potter world, or just like disabilities in our world. Okay, Emma, you're on.
Emma Brandel (she/her): Yeah. And I also just wanted to kind of add on to that that I think it's also not just. Pop. Culture is so helpful in academia and and learning to think about our our world, but specifically Pop culture media that we took in very early in our lives, which at the generation that my classmates and I were at, we were all, I mean the Harry Potter books. The first one was published 5 years before I was born.
Emma Brandel (she/her): So we're definitely living in a post, Harry Potter World, all of us, and that really I'm. The first time I ran Harry Potter I was in first grade. So these ideas have been with me for so long, and they are always this one.
Emma Brandel (she/her): you know, far off fantasy world that didn't have anything to do with our world until you go back and look at it with a certain eye. And so
Emma Brandel (she/her): the concept of squibs is something that you know I read about when I was 8, and I've known about them, and I didn't consider them until I read it again in high school. So in the second book we learn 2 different terms that are kind of opposite from each other, and are also
Emma Brandel (she/her): kind of different metaphors. So you have muggle borns with the derogatory term mud blood. That is, a person who is born to 2 muggle parents or non magical parents, and is a witch or wizard, and so they have magic. And then, on the other hand, you have squibs
Emma Brandel (she/her): which are born to visiting parents normally a pure blood family. I think it is referenced. So somebody, all the way down their family lineage is wizarding, and then they do not have magical abilities themselves.
Emma Brandel (she/her): so that it's kind of interesting, because the muggle borns throughout the series are constantly this racialized
Emma Brandel (she/her): a group considered in this allegory for the holocaust as the Jewish people; whereas squibs are very much indicative of, and representative of.
Emma Brandel (she/her): disabled people. Both, I think they fit into certain physically disabled and mentally disabled archetypes.
John Anthony Dunne: Chris Border. If you want to jump in, I think it a natural follow up would be something like
John Anthony Dunne: the lack of accommodation. Perhaps at Hogwarts something along also, or and and and also the social session cultural function of screams.
Chris Porter: Julie. Just before I preface this question.
Chris Porter: Oh, sorry you oh, yeah, you're let's get preferences. And then, because I I can hear, i'm the question I'm going to ask will link in with some of your work in Mesopotamian and Acadian as well. So i'm trying to marry the 2 together, so i'll let you decide how you want to
join those 2 together. So let me swap microphones, and i'll ask a question.
Chris Porter: All right. So John comes up if you can hear me.
Chris Porter: Ok. Great thanks so much for that. Emma and and Julie.
Chris Porter: The the place of squibs in in the Harry Potter universe is is a
Chris Porter: quite a a a difficult one. A lot of the time we see in at Hogwarts. They're They're marginalizing yet, like Filch and he plays such an intrinsic role he's a such a a rich character within the books, and and in in your podcast.
Chris Porter: It strikes me that that sometimes
Chris Porter: they are. Yes, they are that disabled character, but they are also an integral part of the social structure
Chris Porter: for visiting the visiting community. And it actually reminds me and, Julie, I know you. You've done some work in the Mesopotamian and Akkadian the function of unix in the court.
Chris Porter: They are intentionally disabled in that case, but they they are utilizing a dis disabled person in that in that case, intentionally disabling them to provide a a category of people to be able to use
Chris Porter: in that way. So
Chris Porter: interested, then how does this function within the Harry Potter universe in the part of us us. We have squibs in that luminal space. Do we have those analogs for for the roles that they provide in other ways like that
Julye Bidmead: good question. And I totally agree with you that that squibs are in that liminal place. I mean they are on the border or the margins.
Julye Bidmead: They're not muggles, but they function kind of as muggles. They're not wizards, but they're born of wizarding family, so they don't fit in anywhere and your analogy with unix in the core in the ancient world especially, really makes sense in this context.
Julye Bidmead: But I think there's one key difference, I think, and you could correct me if i'm wrong unix choose to go into this role.
Julye Bidmead: Maybe some of them are forced into it with slavery. I'm not a 100% sure, but it's more of a choice where
Julye Bidmead: I swim
Julye Bidmead: doesn't have that choice. They cannot do the magic, so it is a little different. But you are correct in the sense that if you look at Filter, and then also another squib in the book is Mrs. Fig. Harry's next door. Neighbor, who is, you know
Julye Bidmead: helps helps the story along. Both of these character squibs help the story along. But what I think what we're looking at particularly is how the author of the book describes the scripts and the narrative they're set up to be, you know, sort of
Julye Bidmead: I don't know what what a better word for us. But you know, Mrs. Fig.
Julye Bidmead: Next door is like described as like a crazy cat lady whose house smells like cabbage. Not. Seems to be a character. You're going to want to embrace, and then Phil Emma can pick up a little bit more on. This is very disagreeable, so
Julye Bidmead: the way that the author puts the narrative in makes us want to look at swims as the other as something that is not quite as agreeable. And we think about that, you know, in our class
Julye Bidmead: as a form of disability or form of ableism. If you are a full-blooded wizard, you can conform perform spells. If you're squid your disks, able. You're not able to do that.
Julye Bidmead: Emma, do you want to say more?
Emma Brandel (she/her): Yeah. And I I think that you bring up a really good point. So, looking at the 2. Really the only 2 characters we meet who are scripts in the entire series. We see that they are shown as being not enough.
Emma Brandel (she/her): not just in their abilities, but also in their personalities. I think that filch is not good enough to be a wizard, because he's cranky and mean to the students he doesn't deserve it. I think that there's almost like a sense of like, you know. Ron says, Well, that explains why he's so mean. And I mean he doesn't Even
Emma Brandel (she/her): so, there's this concept of maybe he doesn't even deserve to have magic if he has such a bad attitude. And then also I think that there's the concept of
Emma Brandel (she/her): the only time that Mrs. Fig. Is seen as being maybe helpful to wizards, or good enough is when she can do something wizards can do. She goes to the ministry in the fifth book to stand up for Harry when that he is on trial for using magic underage.
Emma Brandel (she/her): and she says no. He had to, as a defense against a dark creature, and she explains that she can see them, even though she can't do magic, and in that way she is able to help him be acquitted.
Emma Brandel (she/her): But if she couldn't, if she couldn't see the dementer, she would have been no use. So I think that that's a really important moment where
the only time that she is worthy is when she can do something a wizard could do.
John Anthony Dunne: Yeah, these 2 characters are the only ones that we see, because Squibs Aren't really allowed at Hogwarts, they don't have a place at Hogwarts. There's no educational inclusivity or educational accommodation for squibs, and i'm wondering if we could talk a little bit about that, and maybe
John Anthony Dunne: to to do so. Talk a little bit about? What is the purpose of education at Hogwarts? What? What is an education at Hogwarts? For
John Anthony Dunne: what kind of formation is meant to take place there?
Julye Bidmead: All right. I'll start
Julye Bidmead: looking at it from this perspective and education at Hogwarts is for
Julye Bidmead: able-bodied wizard
Julye Bidmead: thinking just in general. I'm looking at it from sort of a modern perspective. If anybody had any
Julye Bidmead: ability issues, they wouldn't be able to survive at how awards? What is their like? 142 moving staircases, or
Julye Bidmead: I mean, we don't have any ramps, you know somebody that's differently able wouldn't even be able to survive. So it really just sort of implies you have to be able bodied you have to be. Then take it a next step further. You have to be a good wizard, because you are being trained
Julye Bidmead: in your skills of spells and and wizard knowledge. So squibs don't even have that opportunity, I think it says, and i'm not sure which book it says, but it talks about it's kinder to have the squibs not go to a wizarding school. Send them to a muggle school.
Julye Bidmead: because then they won't be treated as second class citizens. So that's we. We see that in the book. So it's. Squibs are really not the Hogwarts is not for squips or any of the magical schools.
Julye Bidmead: Emma, you want to add.
Emma Brandel (she/her): Yeah, I actually I read a really great article in preparation for this. I don't know if you I can't remember if we read this one in class, but it's by Megan Rhodes, Harry Potter, and the stigma of disability squibs as outsiders of the to the magical universe, and I believe bronze. Aunt Muriel says that quote.
Emma Brandel (she/her): Of course she's gossiping about squibs, and who might be one. But something that is really interesting is. I remember when we discussed squibs in class for the first time, somebody brought up the really good point that how many classes, so
Emma Brandel (she/her): to go back squibs. The reason that they can't do magic is because they can't do wand work so they can't hold a magic wand and say cells and have something happen.
Emma Brandel (she/her): But that's not the only magic or things taught at Hogwarts Hogwarts is very much more of a trade school than anything, because is teaching you practical knowledge in potions, and how to care for magical plants, Magical Animals. A history of Magic. All of these things Don't require a wand, and actually, in this article they bring up, that there are really 12 classes, all like always mentioned in the Harry Pot and the Hogwarts curriculum.
Emma Brandel (she/her): and only 3 of them require constant use of a wand. There are 9 classes, and yes, 2 of those 3 of those classes are core classes.
Emma Brandel (she/her): but it seems ridiculous that squibs could not at least they can partake in 3 quarters of a magical curriculum without the use of a wand, and for that matter, they could even study.
Emma Brandel (she/her): wand work without being able to do it. So it seems incredibly
Emma Brandel (she/her): careless to leave them out of the conversation when they can do 75% the coursework.
Julye Bidmead: And there's a lot of jobs in the wizarding world that they could be assigned to do. But they don't need to use
Julye Bidmead: magic or one work for. So if they did go to Hogwarts, and they took these, what 9 classes and learned about the history of magic, I mean, they could do that. And then another thing that we discussed in the class, and this is not really not in the Harry Potter books, but it's in the pot or more stuff is all the other visiting schools around the world.
Julye Bidmead: and I think the American and maybe the African wizarding school. They don't need to use ones. Okay, so
Julye Bidmead: squibs, could they? They could work there. So this whole idea that it's dependent on one magic kind of falls apart.
Emma Brandel (she/her): Yeah. And another thing. This article brings up, which is just it's a really great. It's so dense. It kind of takes everything we talked about for 3 h and puts it in a beautiful 5 pages, but they also bring up a a character who is kind of
Emma Brandel (she/her): mit ctl, and aligned with squibs, and that's Hagrid, the the groundskeeper and hagrid has magic. He went to school originally as a wizard. He is half giant, but he was a wizard, and he got expelled, and his wand was broken. He works at the school, and has worked at the school for decades without the use of a one. He's not allowed to legally use a wand, and he is a teacher at the school. He teaches care of magical creatures. So if a teacher, 250
Emma Brandel (she/her): at Hogwarts cannot use magic with the use of a wand. It seems pretty
Emma Brandel (she/her): ridiculous frankly, that a student who cannot use a want because of their ability rather than the legality of it. It seems crazy that they're not allowed to
John Anthony Dunne: stay under Chris.
Chris Porter: So what one of my questions ends up taking us into the direction of habitation, of squibs and potential hehabilitation of
Chris Porter: and and of for disability. Do we want to go then, now, or do we want to leave that for perhaps another question in the chain.
John Anthony Dunne: Well.
John Anthony Dunne: I I mean I guess we could go wherever I mean, you know. Pardon me, was was wondering if we could hear a little bit about some of the particular reading guide prompts related to scripts.
John Anthony Dunne: You know something like that.
Chris Porter: I don't know.
Chris Porter: Stand you on a go for that, Ex. I. I'll then circle back into the sort of the the the where. Where do you squeeze in?
Chris Porter: What am I was just talking on just to how my scripts that fit in in the because it comes back to field
Chris Porter: in the
Chris Porter: the screen. That
Chris Porter: Yeah. Excellent.
Stanley Ng: Yeah. Awesome. So you mentioned that in what you guys are doing. There's there's so much work that you guys are doing, not just in terms of running these papers, but even developing, you know, some sort of green guy or prompts, and it sounds like just from how you've explained it. There's it's not just it.
Stanley Ng: It's pretty wide in terms of the audience. So actually one thing that i'm curious to know is
Stanley Ng: first off. Is there Are there any like?
Stanley Ng: Are there any prompts that you're able to just share with us this right here for our listeners, and maybe a collection, maybe a a collection from different groups. So I know that you mentioned, hey? There's maybe some for parents, but
Stanley Ng: but maybe some for a different audience as well, so that we can kind of see just how how it's being communicated, and how it's being received this in our audience, and just in the broadening set you've addressed these for.
Emma Brandel (she/her): Yeah. So the way that I structured my part of the reading guide, I would have the subsections. I would give all the background information we put in introduction also that these should be read after every book has been read. So they come with the questions after just reading the book and come and analyze it. So
Emma Brandel (she/her): I give some background on squibs. But of course they've already just read about them, and then I give a little bit of an analysis of how that is a metaphor for
Emma Brandel (she/her): our our world. And then, at the very end. I I put some questions, and these I tried to gear them towards Upper Elementary as best as I could. I work with kids over the summer. So I I kind of have an idea of the kinds of questions that is up to there
Emma Brandel (she/her): up to task for them. And yeah, so I I could read some of the questions that I put at the end of that section from the Chamber of Secrets.
Emma Brandel (she/her): Yeah. So I said the big question after I had given the whole 3 paragraphs. So the big question that comes from this analysis is, if the modern world has moved forward in its treatment and accommodation of disabled individuals. Why has a whizzing world not also moved forward?
Emma Brandel (she/her): Should the wizarding world embrace squibs and offer them a place in their society. Should squibs be allowed to Hogwarts.
Emma Brandel (she/her): If the real world can acknowledge and accommodate the needs of disabled individuals, why could the visiting world not and so I had given a little bit of an explanation of how it disabled individuals have been treated, and the fight for their rights across the twentieth century. I talked about
Emma Brandel (she/her): being sent away to homes in the twentieth century, and how it was very dark time it was hidden. It was under a lot of scrutiny, especially public figures, and how they would hide away their disabled family members and loved ones. And so that was those were the questions I was
Emma Brandel (she/her): trying to get these the kids to engage with after giving them a short history.
John Anthony Dunne: Chris, you, Benjamin.
Chris Porter: all these guys, do you want me to take it in that direction then, or
John Anthony Dunne: well, I think maybe maybe we should just follow up on on this this bit about Why hasn't the visiting world like let's let's maybe at least think about that together. If somebody
Yeah.
Chris Porter: All right, let me stop Mike
on mute.
Chris Porter: It comes down, John
Chris Porter: Cool.
Chris Porter: So one of the things then in the wisdom world here is that the the squibs are often so denigrated. They're not even just hidden away like they are in other other forms. But
Chris Porter: sorry they're not even just hidden away, as as has been often the tradition in in the Western world. But they are. They are so denigrated, and yet they often seem to function fairly well in muggle society, so we know that the Weesley's have a accountant in the family.
Chris Porter: and there's I I I mentioned somewhere. When I was at one of the Harry Potter places of I muggle a squib who became a Rugby player. And so there's a there's a little book that you can buy of his autobiography as a squib.
Yeah.
Chris Porter: Why do you think, then, given that we have in in
Chris Porter: out in our modern context, and also the history of of disability in in in in the
Chris Porter: our world, I guess you'd say, but is becomes so. Ha! Has this rich history of of trying to integrate people with disability, and even within the times when they they would send them to a home or a a
Chris Porter: institution, those institutions would would often seek to to provide some form of education or some form of integration for them in.
Chris Porter: Why do you think that in the in the of us. We see this highly dualistic society where there is this constant
Chris Porter: Dennis denigration, and then separation of anyone who doesn't conform to the normate, the the the normative features of the whistling world.
Julye Bidmead: That's a very difficult question to answer. I don't know why we would see this in the narratives.
Julye Bidmead: I
Julye Bidmead: think that squibs, even though they've gone on to be Rugby players or accountants, or help out, they should have equal access to the same education
Julye Bidmead: that every other wizard, born family child should have. So I you know, when there's times we've thought about the squibs not being allowed in hogwarts. Now we don't know if they've ever been the forever. They tried to get in, but they don't get their acceptance
Julye Bidmead: letters, and so they're not invited to join, but it's very similar to the
Julye Bidmead: racial segregation in our schools, you know not not that many years ago it's the same thing, so they should be
Julye Bidmead: invited to participate in the same sort of education. Why, it's not. There is a really a good question, and I don't have any great answer for that. Maybe Emma has some better idea.
Yeah, I mean, I think, that this is the question we kept coming back to constantly for every issue. Why is it like this in the narrative?
Emma Brandel (she/her): And I think, if you want to Just simple it simplify it down. It's just that. She was writing a book series, and she wanted to incorporate elements of culture. But she had a story to tell. I think that's a little reductive with a lot of these conversations. I think something we also really discovered, and I've constantly been
Emma Brandel (she/her): re-examining the series as I read them, in elementary Middle high school and college. But something I didn't realize until this class was that I always thought of
Emma Brandel (she/her): the the wizarding world as this really eccentric and vibrant culture. And they're different, and they're not afraid to be different. But that's just compared to muggles.
Emma Brandel (she/her): and, in fact, wizarding society is incredibly normative. It's incredibly, you know, culturally conservative, trying to retain what it once was. And I think that that is the reason you see a lot of things in the series, and why they always. They do seem archaic and kind of backwards.
Emma Brandel (she/her): the way that they are still fighting for muggle born rights in the nineties. When
Emma Brandel (she/her): you see that in the wizarding world there's a lot of parallels, and they were fighting a war during World War 2 at the same time. They were, you know, having a lot of the same parallel issues going on just in the rising world. And so there's kind of this question of why it took so long to have this
Emma Brandel (she/her): battle for muckleborne rights, and how nothing really changed after the Mugaborns got some more freedom after Voldemort was defeated. I mean you have all of the other
Emma Brandel (she/her): intelligent non human species still can't have wands, still can't be seen as
Emma Brandel (she/her): equals in society, and you still see how self oppression. And so I think that
Emma Brandel (she/her): the problem is, we think of the series and and the world in the series as being really really subversive and different. And the culture is really.
Emma Brandel (she/her): I think it's a very conservative culture that leads it to being kind of behind in the times from when it was set in the modern world.
John Anthony Dunne: You know what one of the things that you said there is that it might be a bit reductive to kind of PIN it on Rollings kind of need to create a good story or whatever. I wonder if maybe to say it more cynically. Is there some unconscious ableism sort of at work within her writing? And I I wonder if we could think about that.
John Anthony Dunne: You know, because one of the things that stands out about Harry Potter is actually the way that it is pretty conscious about prejudice, or at least it addresses prejudice like
John Anthony Dunne: quite explicitly, I mean even with the mud blood example. As as you mentioned earlier, Emma, there was a a keynote print presenter at Chestnut Hill College, a handful of years ago. Loris Fitzali, an Italian scholar, who did this great social scientific research about the ways in which children who were exposed to Harry Potter, who were reading Harry Potter, and specifically reading as opposed to watching
John Anthony Dunne: who are reading. Harry Potter grew in Empathy. That, and it was like detectable relative to the you know children who weren't reading Harry Potter within this study.
John Anthony Dunne: growing and empathy, and and it just it just it just is striking that, given the nature of this analogy, which seems so obvious as we're discussing it right. And yet it it it. It seems like a major miss at the same time, because the text
John Anthony Dunne: wants the reader to grow and empathy, or at least it seems that way by the explicit subject matter of prejudice. And it actually does have that effect based upon the scientific research. So i'm just curious, you know, like I I just threw out there this possibility of this kind of unconscious able is relative to this.
John Anthony Dunne: You know. Fact that the text would seem to want us to, you know, move in a different direction. I'm: just curious about your thoughts about that.
Emma Brandel (she/her): Yeah. So I think that that's a really good point. I think that you'll find. And we definitely found that J. K. Rowling had a lot of unchallenged biases when writing the series. And there's this constant push and pull between feeling empathy for characters.
Emma Brandel (she/her): and also anybody who is bad is fat, lazy, greedy.
Emma Brandel (she/her): and mean, and you are supposed to make fun of them for that, or they are.
Emma Brandel (she/her): If they're disabled, they're mean, and they mean
Emma Brandel (she/her): because they're disabled, and there's unchallenged colonialism written into this magical series that is never seen as a bad thing. It's seen as some glorious. You know, Bill Weasley's job to go into Egypt and Egyptian tombs, and and break 350
Emma Brandel (she/her): magical spells, and that's seen as a great, wonderful, exciting job. I think there's a lot of things that are really indicative of the the culture that she was writing in. In. You know.
Emma Brandel (she/her): middle class. We say middle class lightly. She claims.
Emma Brandel (she/her): I I don't want to get into that. She said. She was poor, and you know she was upper middle class for most of her life, and then she was pouring when she wrote the books, and you know the whole thing. But
Emma Brandel (she/her): you know she's writing this in a white neoliberal nineties, Britain, and that is going to reflect in the series. So
Stanley Ng: so I
Stanley Ng: you know, in in my in most of us are we? We've been involved in some form of education and teaching, and i'm kind of want to just throw in just some application question. And you know what one thing I've been. I've really enjoyed just hearing from from this conversation is
Stanley Ng: how you're using just something that's common in culture that people just remember very nicely, You know. You couldn't say that for some other things right, but for some reason there's some. There's something powerful about story, and
Stanley Ng: how that can you know? Not only for you guys, not only for you to be able to analyze and to be able to provide commentary for, but also how that can actually make a possibly a greater impact. And that's why we you know us as scholars or so we would pursue publishing, so that our work is out there. So in terms of you know, not thinking super broad, or any, but maybe just in the immediate. Let's say next.
Stanley Ng: a few, a couple of years, few years or so. How do you see the work that you're doing in this, and with this plan to maybe do some hope, some publishing.
Stanley Ng: How do you see this making some sort of impact in some of the in some of the areas that you are in. So whether it's an education or in the workplace.
Stanley Ng: for example, I, my background is in engineering, and one of the major things that we're trying to implement more and more especially when it comes to things like civil engineering is
Stanley Ng: actually implement more virtual reality, so that those who who are physically disabled can actually be in a build site. It may not be live, but at least you know that's a hazard for anyone who had who needs any sort of movement accommodations.
Stanley Ng: but by at least implementing that. That's so. So. What kind of impact do you see see this making in society, whether it's in education? K. 12, or in the workplace, even outside of education as well?
Julye Bidmead: That's great question. And I can see the reading guide as a whole, not particular just on disability, but making a difference, because it gives
Julye Bidmead: parents or teachers, or whoever kind of a tool when they're working with a child. Let's just say a disabled child, and they say i'm reading these books. I don't see me in there.
Julye Bidmead: I don't see anybody that's like me, or you know
Julye Bidmead: the Harry Potter world is pretty pretty white. You're a person of color, if you are.
Julye Bidmead: you know non heterosexual. You're not there in the narrative. So this reading guide can at least help to explain.
Julye Bidmead: Well, this is the cultural historical context in which the books were written in the nineties.
Julye Bidmead: There are questions that you can ask the narrative about why they aren't there, and what you can do with it. And I think that with those kind of questions they can apply it to other works of literature that might have this problem. And i'm going to tie back on to
Julye Bidmead: the article that you said about reducing prejudice in Harry Potter, because I have my students read that it's an excellent article. It's scientifically done, but and I think it's great, and I think it works, and I think it's true. But I wonder
Julye Bidmead: if they were to do a similar study now
Julye Bidmead: on children who are growing up in 2,023. I think the study was done in
Julye Bidmead: 2,010, maybe I don't know
Julye Bidmead: there is, just, you know a different sort of wokenness with young people today, and I wonder if they would feel the same way.
Julye Bidmead: because when you think about, even when Harry Potter first came out the idea of Hermione
Julye Bidmead: being this great feminist character. You know women now. Young girls always would relate to Hermione I could raise my hand in class. I can be a scholar. I can be that. But we've gone way past that now. Now we can look at Hermione and kind of turn back and say, hey, she's a bit of a flawed character. There's some problems there, so I think that perhaps it can kind of just maybe
Julye Bidmead: give some sort of a a context to help guide the questions in the reading.
Julye Bidmead: So that's what I think the good would be, and I see Emma had raised her hand.
Emma Brandel (she/her): I raised my hand when you said the young girls always looked up to Hermione.
Chris Porter: Are we going to continue on with that? Or
Stanley Ng: I need. You can go ahead.
Chris Porter: I'm sorry. I wasn't sure where the emerald is going to continue on. I'll answer your question, saying, okay.
Chris Porter: i'm just gonna circle back, but i'll, I'll answer. I'll just get some microphone. Sorry
Chris Porter: just wanted. We have record 2 inches to this question, and John can choose which one.
Chris Porter: Thanks so much, Julie just wanting to circle back to a point where we'll talk about it a bit early about the place of squibs.
Chris Porter: That's intro number one.
Chris Porter: Thanks so much, Julie. Well, interesting areas with, and the challenges with the the reading guide is the place of squibs in in in the part of us. And also then
Chris Porter: how the minimal way is that routing actually seeks to to allow them to to be integrated in the the the one that always comes to mind is
a
who
Chris Porter: effectively uses Miss Norris or Mrs. Norris as a disability aid so filter as a squib can't use magic. But Mrs. Norris seems to have some form of
Chris Porter: magical ability shows up on the marauders map, is able to track the the students through the winding corridors seems to have some form of 6 senses to where they are, and also be able to communicate back to.
Chris Porter: so that they can have them when they're out after dark. Whether or not, we we think that she's a maledictus or not. She does seem to function in some way as a a disability aid.
Chris Porter: I'm. Just interested in the reading guide.
Chris Porter: How how can we? How, how in the reading God? How do you draw that? Those sorts of things out for people you mentioned earlier? You know, people of color Don't necessarily see themselves in in the part of versus etc., etc. How do, how how does the reading God really draw those things out for us.
Julye Bidmead: That's a good point with Mrs. Norris. Basically, Mrs. Norris is a better which wizard than Phillips is, and is functioning in that same sort of way, and is exactly what you said Sort of a disability aid like
Julye Bidmead: how we would stop seeing eye, dogs, or therapy pets, or whatever to help. But again, when you look at it from that way.
Julye Bidmead: Phil can't do it on his own.
Julye Bidmead: He needs to have that
Julye Bidmead: that extra bit to look at it. So I think it can be taken both ways as a positive and a little bit, maybe as a negative, but it makes built function. Then as a whole character
Julye Bidmead: being able to do everything that they couldn't do on their own. And so that's actually, you know, a a good thing in real life, because if you can't do everything on your own, it's not bad to rely upon. You know somebody else to do it. What you know, regardless of Mrs. Fields being good or bad, or whatever it's, an aid
Julye Bidmead: to help it. And so those are the kind of questions that we can put into the Reading guide to make them think a little bit further on this topic.
Emma Brandel (she/her): Yeah, that's a good point. We've in our discussions about how to edit the reading guide and and make it ready for publication is, we want to
Emma Brandel (she/her): kind of remove the questions from the the paragraphs themselves, and at the end of each chapter put a couple of different question sections for different age groups to try to if you're reading it for the first time when you're 7 versus when you're reading it for the first time when you're 12 you're going to have very different world concepts, and
Emma Brandel (she/her): just your brains will be different. And so that could be definitely something that we bring up. And I also wanted to point out that it's interesting because Mrs. Fig
Emma Brandel (she/her): also breeds measles which are like magical cats that have extra abilities. And so I think it's interesting that you see both of these characters as being closely tied to their pets that have kind of other worldly abilities that they
Emma Brandel (she/her): are not.
Emma Brandel (she/her): you know, lucky enough to have. So
John Anthony Dunne: I think we have time for one more question, Stan. If you want to ask one? If you don't have a question I could. I could toss you one. Do you have one in mind?
Chris Porter: Yeah, I just want to say.
Chris Porter: Oh.
Chris Porter: Emma and Julie, I presume you've listened to the podcast, which
a
Chris Porter: sorry Sorry, Chris, you cut out. You got really kind of staticy there, but which please, which please. Yeah, yeah, i'll see you. This the difference questions
Chris Porter: the different questions people have when they reread it. They've done like 5 re readings of Harry Potter.
Chris Porter: and they're all academics, and they've gone from. This is how we read it as teenagers. This is how we read it, as you know, like as this is how we read it as. And this is how we read it as epistemologists. Just a really interesting Die Chronic reading strategy.
John Anthony Dunne: Sorry, Chris, you're You're getting really robotic, and your audio is kind of being stretched out pretty
John Anthony Dunne: pretty massively. Stan. Would you like to ask the final question? If if you if you don't have one, I could.
Stanley Ng: I could give you one.
Chris Porter: I
John Anthony Dunne: You're good. You're good. You're good.
Stanley Ng: Yeah. So
Stanley Ng: hey, it just as a final thought Here, as you have put in all this work into everything, and just love to hear both from Julie and Emma, me individually, what has been like a like the biggest surprise that has come out of this
Stanley Ng: love to hear just maybe something from like, hey? You had some perspective in the past it when you first read it. Kind of going off of. You know what Chris had mentioned about. You know this podcast is maybe a a read from the past, and then. Now you just look at it with fresh eyes. What's been like the biggest surprise
Stanley Ng: for you just working on this this wonderful tool?
Emma Brandel (she/her): Well, I think I can start. I I think that the most surprising thing.
Emma Brandel (she/her): First of all, I finished the books for the first time when I was in second grade, and if you had told me in second grade that in 10 years I would be in a class all about Harry Potter and writing about Harry Potter for a class that would have just been the biggest dream to the third grade me. But I I guess that
when I reread them in high school that was around the time of the
Emma Brandel (she/her): transphobic reckoning online and the cancelling originally of Jk. Rowling. Of course, she wasn't officially canceled. She still
Emma Brandel (she/her): has so much impact on the world. But I I kind of moved away from Harry Potter. It made me sad to engage with, because I was seeing all of these things that I I didn't remember from childhood. And obviously.
Emma Brandel (she/her): you know, book written 30 years ago is going to have things that did not age well, and I remember in high school being a little bit disappointed, we reading it.
Emma Brandel (she/her): and
Emma Brandel (she/her): when I joined the class I read the books again before the class started in preparation, and then we started talking about it
Emma Brandel (she/her): and just being around other people. My age that also love to the books as kids, and we all have the same issues with them now, and issues with things outside of the text from the author now, and just having that community, we kind of all got together and said, No.
Emma Brandel (she/her): we're not going to give this up, because I've met so much to us. So much of our identity growing up was put in these books, and I think the most surprising
Emma Brandel (she/her): and
Emma Brandel (she/her): amazing part of this is that I think I like the books even more than I did when I was a kid. I I think that I get more joy from reading them, though, than I ever have, and that was the most surprising thing, and it's it's amazing. So
Julye Bidmead: that was great, Emma
Julye Bidmead: for me of obviously I've read the Harry Potter books as an adult. I was already a scholar, professor teaching. So you know I read them and just thought, this is great. This is fun. Of course I would see parallels to religion and things like that in it that interest me. And then, of course, I put it aside, but it wasn't until
Julye Bidmead: let's say maybe 12 years ago or so when students started really saying, Got to teach Harry Potter, and then I went and re-read the books again, and when I re-read them i'm like, Wow! There's a lot there. This so much to deal with, not just in religion, but
Julye Bidmead: gender and race and
Julye Bidmead: class structure and parallels to history. And so I realized well, you know, regardless of what we may think of what the author feels about certain things. It's brilliant literature.
Julye Bidmead: It ties well together.
Julye Bidmead: even though there's problems with
Julye Bidmead: the later cannon stuff like cursed child or fantastic beasts.
Julye Bidmead: So kind of all works together. There's a like a narrative thread that you can trace through it, and you know there's plot holes, of course, and all of that. But still, when you think about such a large body of literature that it can really all be tied together.
Julye Bidmead: There is something there. So just like Emma, every time I teach the class I
Julye Bidmead: We read all the books quickly, obviously because I've read them so many times, but every single time I learn something new, or especially in class
Julye Bidmead: students, have these memorized. They know these books far better than I do, and so I learned something every time I read it. So I kind of hope the magic stays with us, and I think that the reading guide and just teaching the class
Julye Bidmead: is one way of helping the change, You know. I don't want to cancel it. I think it's still valuable to us.
John Anthony Dunne: Well, Professor, bid Mead and Emma, thank you so much for joining us. Just really appreciate hearing from both of you as we think about scribes in particular. Obviously you you all have done a a broader, a broader dart, I should say.
John Anthony Dunne: You know, Emma, you've done a broader work on on this reading guide that that Professor bid Mead is now joining, joining with you on on all kinds of topics of injustice and and marginalization, but just in particular thinking together about. You know what
John Anthony Dunne: mit
John Anthony Dunne: of of people with disabilities in the mugle world, I just think, is a really valuable and helpful thing for us to consider as part of this broader series that we're doing on disability and theology. So thank you both. So much for joining us.
Thank you.
Emma Brandel (she/her): Thank you. This has been great