Episode Details

In this Prof Responds episode, Professor Julian Wamble returns to Seamus Finnigan to sit with what the Critical Magic Theory community had to say. Listeners dig into three themes: the machinery of Irish stereotyping in both the books and the films, and whether the cultural blind spots baked into Seamus's characterization were ever truly unconscious; Hogwarts as a British colonial institution and what it means that Irish magical families had no alternative but a school run by the British; and the question of whether Seamus Finnigan is a hero, and what our resistance to calling him one reveals about whose eyes we've spent seven books reading through. The episode closes with a reflection on children, adults, propaganda, and trust — and what the Harry Potter series quietly teaches us about which of those things we're supposed to place in which.

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