Harry Potter Club Comes to the University of Memphis

The University of Memphis has a variety of organizations for students to participate in, from the French Club to the Hispanic Student Association to the Student Government Association, but there is one club that appeals to the literary heart and captures the interest of fantasy lovers on campus.

The Harry Potter Club is a club dedicated to the much loved, respected and adored series of books written by the author JK Rowling. It is safe to say that most people, if not everyone, knows the story about the young boy who suddenly finds out he is a wizard and is sent to a school called Hogwarts. It is also no little known fact that the films do immensely well in theaters, and, according to the Internet Movie Database, the first Harry Potter film became the second highest grossing film around the world, with only Titanic ahead.

So it is no surprise that this club would surface, even among the college crowd.

“It’s just a bunch of fans,” says English instructor Catherine Dice. “The current crop of college students is the perfect age group to have been about 10 or 11 years old when the books started, and of course Harry was 11 years old in the first book. So, it’s almost like this group of college students has grown up along with Harry.”

The club has not been here long, however. The founders even had some trouble starting it and getting people to come.

“They had tried to make a club last year, but I guess maybe it wasn’t advertised very well. So they had a meeting and only like six people came, and the people who organized it, they were just crushed. They really thought there would be more love for Harry Potter,” said English instructor Tammy Jones.

But this new year seems promising. As far as flyers go, advertising has gone well, with one flyer introducing itself, showing the words “no Death Eaters or Twilight fans allowed”. Another flyer advertises a “Death Day Bash” as a Halloween celebration, in which anyone who is coming has to wear a Harry Potter-related costume. This event appeared on Facebook, along with the club itself. With the act of placing advertisements where many students would be sure to see them, and using social media for making connections, the club has a greater chance of taking off and bringing in more Harry Potter fans, even more than the 80 or so members that are in the club now.

And indeed, this year, the club takes in many people. James M. Smith Hall is where the meetings take place, and the first meeting was a great surprise to many people.

“I think they were expecting maybe 20 or 30 people to show up, and lo and behold a hundred people show up and they’re crammed into the room and violating all kinds of fire codes, I’m sure,” says Dice. “And it’s just taken off.”

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the emergence of a Harry Potter club on campus is the possibility of a Quidditch team, among other possibilities such as a ball and Harry Potter trivia. In the world of Harry Potter, Quidditch is a sport played on flying broomsticks, and features balls that could knock one off of their broom and another ball that is small, quick, and could end the game in a second.

Obviously, Quidditch in real life is quite different, because of course there is not a possibility of flying brooms. The players are still required to keep brooms between their legs at all times. Dice describes it as being similar to soccer, but with brooms.

“I personally would not play,” says Jones, with a laugh. “But there are some really hardcore fans, and they want to express that athletically. It combines two things that they love.”

And for Quidditch players from other schools, it has become a very huge deal. The International Quidditch Association is a league of Quidditch teams from many areas. Countries such as the United Kingdom, of course, Argentina, South Africa, and Russia have teams devoted to this game. Close to three-hundred teams are found throughout the world, and one-hundred of them are official members of the league.

There is no mistake that the love for this series is very intense, enough to have clubs and teams created by people in adulthood. But what is it about this story that is so desirable?

“Every generation has its hero story. Its adventure story,” says Dice. She reads a quote from the author Stephen King, who compares Harry Potter to Twilight, a popular series about vampires and romance, and shows how the former is more appealing.

“‘Harry Potter is all about confronting fears, finding inner strength, and doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend.’” And this quote may be true. Harry Potter appeals and will keep appealing to more and more audiences of more and more generations, because of the magic and imagination that it brings.

For more information about the Harry Potter Club, go here. For more information about the International Quidditch Association, go here.

Occupy Memphis

Banned Books Week - Focusing on an Important Era(Story written in late September)

The McWherter Library, located at the University of Memphis, is hosting Banned Books Week again this year. This event demonstrates a topic that has been debated and argued, but should have an obvious reaction. That topic is freedom of expression, and the event is showing the obvious reaction-books should never be banned. In 2011, however, the books that are chosen will have a special focus on the Progressive Era, to tie in with this school’s celebration of 100 years. As the University of Memphis opened in 2012, the books will be from around those times.

Beginning on Sept. 26 and ending Sept. 30, Banned Books Week will be a way to show students and staff alike that all books should be noticed and not ignored. Steven Knowlton, the Collection Development Librarian who actively participates in organizing and reading at this event, sums it up nicely, saying, “Banned Books Week is a way to celebrate the freedom to read. One of the principles that libraries operate under is intellectual freedom; that is to say no material should be censored, or banned, or restricted,” says Knowlton, while bringing out a librarian pledge that expresses this sentiment. This simple but crucial statement shows that not only should anyone be able to read, but anyone should be able to read anything that they please. The freedom extends to subjects that are controversial but are entertaining and educational for many people.

To celebrate this week, there will be readings in the library from Monday to Friday, the time being from 11:30am to 1:30pm. The books that are chosen to read, Knowlton mentions, will be books that threaten the normal standard of ethics in society. Books such as Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, the Communist Manifesto by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, and Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser will be read because of religious, sexual, and political views that defied the norm.

The topics of banned books have been vast, but Tom Mendina, who is a retired professor, speaks about the Progressive Era being a time where books with women who dealt with sexuality were looked down upon. In that time, and still today for many people, women were supposed to be seen as chaste and pure. Stories about the sexual pursuits of women were alarming to some, especially Christians who believed that books such as these were disrespectful to their religion and mankind. Thus, another topic of literature was ignored, despite its artistic value and potential to have an effect on others.

One of these books was a novel called Madame Bovary, written by Gustave Flaubert. It is about a woman, Emma Bovary, who engages in several acts of adultery, being bored with her increasingly dull life and becoming tired of her husband, who is a doctor. France, Italy, and the United States had all banned this book, because of questionable morals, featuring unfaithfulness and suicide. Although adultery often has negative effects on a person’s life, it is still a novel that should have the opportunity to be praised and, in fact, often is, as Madame Bovary is considered quite a classic today.

High school student Emily Clark, who has read the novel, said, “I like it because it is different. You often hear a lot of books that deal with happy endings, and, to me, this novel had a realistic approach to something that may be ideal for a lot of people, but causes problems instead. I think this novel achieved that.” And, about the topic of banning books, she said, “People may just be afraid to admit that everything is not the way they might want it to be. But instead of banning, we should try to learn more about these things and become more aware.”

Knowlton also mentions that what is controversial for some may not be for others. For example, in largely Islamic countries, a pro-Christian novel probably would not be very familiar, and vice-versa in America. Likewise, people have different opinions and religious backgrounds, and catering to one group alienates the others, which is a step backward instead of forward. Banned Books Week, the American Library Association and its supporters against censorship will continue to enforce this message, and have done so for more than 25 years.

For more information about Banned Books Week, visit ala.org, the American Library Association’s official website.