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Hi everyone, just wanting to let you know that I will not be blogging on this site anymore. 

Go over to www.anaybln.wordpress.com to keep on following my stuff!

"WITCH,PLEASE" PUT ME UNDER ITS SPELL

Two Canadian lady scholars decide to re-read and re-watch the entire series of Harry Potter. And then record their discussion about it and make it to a podcast that has now already 36 episodes. That is Witch,Please by Hannah McGregor and Marcel Kosman, the Podcast that stole all my Internet data in the last month because I just could not stop listening to it everywhere I went. It is the perfect mixture of critical analysis with the atmosphere of general genuine love for this magical world that was my entire childhood, and that I otherwise often defended with all my life if someone tried to critique it in the slightest way. But there is so much to problematizise.

For Hannah and Marcelle close reading is key to detect racism, antisemitism, sexism, fatshaming, homophobia, ableism, topics of labour and slavery, white feminism, and many more issues in the Harry Potter world.

The Podcast is multi-medial: It tackles not only the novels and the filmic adapdations, but also video games, fanfiction and many more. The novel episodes (which are my favourites) are divided into six different categories:

The sorting chat is there to get the conversation starting and to sort the thoughts that came up while reading. Flourish and blotts provides a material approach to the analysis and addresses print culture and the history of books. In the beginning the two women mostly address their own relationship to the books they're reading as physical objects but as the role of media and materiality grows in the narrative of the books, they also focus on the role that print plays inside this world itself. As they put it in the episode on the sixth novel: „This book is very interested in bookishness“. In The boy who narrated they discuss narrative perspective in the novels in general and the unreliability of Harry Potter as an narrator in particular. What this section reminds me of over and over again is that all of the perceptions that this book provides have to be interpreted as highly subjective and that I should always be extremely suspicious of everything that Harry (but also the seemingly omniscient chapters) tells me. The fourth segment makes a lot of sense, as both of the hosts are involved in teaching: It is their discussion on (shockingly bad) pedagogy in Hogwarts in Potions class.

In The forbidden forest - by far my and probably everyone's favourite segment – they talk about power and those who are oppressed by it; about bodies, race, class and sexuality in the world of Harry Potter and how they intersect in many ways.

And last but definitively not least: Granger danger - the feminist segment; focusing on the rightful hero of the Harry Potter series, Hermione Granger. In the Final revisions all sorts of important questions get asked: Is the firebolt a metaphor for white male privilege? Are wands actually dicks? And do witches and wizards wear pants under their robes? ...

Not only is this podcast – as the the names of the segments and episodes („The chamber of whiteness“, „The full-blood Patriarchy“) prove – filled with hilarious puns, the carefully chosen beautiful sound effects and the dynamic between the two women also create the best atmosphere when listening. 
It is light hearted and entertaining yet political and gives me a lot of comfort when listening.

Listen to the Podcast here.

Follow Witch, Please on Twitter and on Tumblr.

1 1/2 DAYS IN COPENHAGEN

Earlier in 2015 I took an overnight bus ride with my mum to Copenhagen. We only stayed one night and went back to Berlin the next day. When you only have one and a half day in a city, you want to make sure to see as much as you can in that time. And if you are on a budget you want to make sure that the activities cost als little as possible. Here's the stuff we did: