Episodes Witch, Please

As you know, we love to laugh! That's why we were thrilled when a brilliant listener, Dix McDevitt (she/her), pitched us an episode about giggling in the Harry Potter series. In Revisions, we talk through Disability Studies, Queer Theory and Trans Studies to prepare for a framework devised by Dix herself about diegetic, semi-diegetic and non-diegetic laughter. Intrigued? You should be! This episode made Coach gasp in awe many times over and had Hannah and Marcelle laughing even more than usual. Tune in for a conversation about Harry's various responses to all kinds of laughter — and his particular distaste for giggling girls.Did you know that we're launching a new show? WELL WE ARE! We've shared a pilot on Patreon to get the input of all our Patreon supporters as we develop the new show! Have strong opinions? Know what you like in a podcast? Want to help us co-create the next iteration of our show? JOIN TODAY and you can be part of that dialogue AND you can get access to a ton of audio perks like unedite

We said we would and so we did! Here is our episode on l'auteur! In this episode, Marcelle leads us through a brief Revisions segment because there is just too much to get into! We talk ideology, discourse, structuralism, celebrity and capitalism before heading into a chat about two dead French guys (Barthes and Foucault) and 'the death of the author." Then in Owls we put our theory to work as we think through J.K. Rowling's presence in the circulation of the Harry Potter series and the way new technologies of publishing have changed the scope of her "author function."If thinking about "the author" makes you crave a great way to say fuck transphobia and transphobes, please donate to our fundraiser for Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre — an organization that's been directly affected by JKR's transphobia. You can find the link here and on our website ohwitchplease.ca. We're halfway to our goal of $5000 by April 30th. We can do it with your help!Also, did you know that we're launching a new show? WELL WE AR

In this bonus episode, Marcelle is joined by Michelle Thompson to discuss Hogwarts Legacy! If you've been curious about this game and the shitstorm surrounding it, think of this convo as your primer! We'll be back in two weeks to add to our Appendices. If you want more of Michelle, check out her podcast Never Was a Gamer! If you want to watch Stephanie Sterling's full video about Hogwarts Legacy, check it out here!Enjoyed the episode? Get more bonus content just like it on Patreon! You can become a supporter at any tier for more perks and bonus content include episodes, interviews, bloopers, comics, merch and more. If becoming a paying subscriber isn't in the cards right now, no stress! Please leave us a review instead — it truly helps sustain the show. Of course, you can always follow us on Instagram or Twitter @ohwitchplease to stay connected. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we bring in a guest, Niki Fitzgerald (she/her), to talk about Witch Hunts. Niki is an NHS doctor specialising in Care of the Elderly and General Internal Medicine. She has recently completed her Masters in Applied Medical Humanities and her dissertation was titled Is Medicine Obsolete? An Abolitionist Feminist Reimagining with Flourishing and Care. Niki joins us for a rich conversation about the shift from feudalism to capitalism which corresponded with the Witch Hunts of the 16th and 17th century. She gives us some really helpful new context to better understand the long history of female subjugation — and some new tools for making sense of Wendelin the Weird from the Wizarding World! If you liked our episodes on Class, Magical Capital, Feminist Theory and the Nation State, you will love this episode!Longtime listener? Help us produce this show by supporting us on Patreon! You can become a supporter at any tier for more perks and bonus content include episodes, interviews, bloopers, comics, m

Welcome back to our Appendix Season — a chance to look at the Harry Potter series as a whole.In this episode we bring in a guest, Andrea Dara Cooper (she/her), to talk about Holocaust Studies. Andrea is Associate Professor and Leonard and Tobee Kaplan Scholar in Modern Jewish Thought and Culture at UNC-Chapel Hill — and she is the author of Gendering Modern Jewish Thought (Indiana University Press, 2021). Tune in for a conversation about the function of allegory in Harry Potter. When does it work in this series? When does it fall short? What are the political implications of relying on the Holocaust to make new meaning in a fantasy world both chock full of stereotypes and severely lacking in diversity? If you enjoyed our episodes on Animal Studies, Eugenics, and Werewolves as Metaphor (just to name a few!), this is required listening!Note: Hannah's computer crashed while recording so we apologize for the poor quality of her sound! Help us produce this show by supporting us on Patreon! You can become a su

Welcome to our Appendix Season — a chance to look at the Harry Potter series as a whole. To kick it off, we're revisiting Sentimentality with a deep dive into Beth Driscoll’s book The New Literary Middlebrow! "But middlebrow is not synonymous with sentimentality?!??!" That's right, but by halfway through this episode you'll understand why Hannah had to bring in Driscoll's writing for a broader conversation about the appeal and mainstream success of the Harry Potter series. If you liked our previous episodes on Sentimentality and Eugenics, you'll love this first-ever Appendix Season episode! Start this season off right and join our Patreon! You can become a Patreon Supporter at any tier for more perks and bonus content include episodes, interviews, bloopers, comics, merch and more. If becoming a paying subscriber isn't in the cards right now, no stress! Please leave us a review instead — it truly helps sustain the show. Of course, you can always follow us on Instagram or Twitter @ohwitchplease to stay con

We're on a break! Please enjoy this episode of #WitchPleaseTellMe, a monthly Patreon perk we're sharing with you in between seasons! We'll be back in two weeks with our first episode of Season 8, "The Appendix Season." Until then, please enjoy a rambling, fun and chaotic episode featuring the entire Witch, Please Team (Hannah, Marcelle, Coach, Zoe and Gaby). You'l hear all about our plan for Season 8, along with way too many intimate details about everyone's relationship to parasociality (other stuff, too!)If you like this episode, hop over to Patreon and become a supporter for just $5/month to hear the rest! If becoming a paying subscriber isn't in the cards right now, no stress! Please leave us a review instead — it truly helps sustain the show. For access to our transcripts, visit ohwitchplease.ca. To stay in touch, follow us everywhere @ohwitchplease. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, we wrap up Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and thus Season Seven of Witch, Please. We talk about Hermione and Ron's sex life in Granger Danger and the history of white wedding dresses in Lewk Book. And, of course, we round out the episode with Marcelle's Devastating Fun Facts TM. This may be the end of Season Seven. but don't fret. We're going to be back in a few weeks for our eighth season (still about Harry Potter) that we've affectionately and aptly titled "The Appendix Season." Listen to the episode to hear more about what we have planned (hint: lots of special guests!). As always, you can become a Patreon Supporter for more perks and bonus content. If becoming a paying subscriber isn't in the cards right now, no stress! Please leave us a review instead — it truly helps sustain the show. For access to our transcripts, visit ohwitchplease.ca. To become a Patreon supporter head to Patreon.com/ohwitchplease.To stay in touch, follow us everywhere @ohwitchplease. Hosted on Acast. See aca

We'll be back in two weeks for our final Season 7 Wrap-Up Episode, but this week we're sharing a bonus interview from Patreon. We were so honored to have been joined by Kiana and Vicky in December for a conversation about Women for Iran (formerly Women for Liberty of Iran) an organization comprised of Iranian women supporting the people of Iran from the UK. In this conversation, Kiana and Vicky answer Hannah and Marcelle's questions (ones you may have, too) about the state of the protests in Iran, what context we need to understand the ongoing revolution, why the death of Mahsa Amini marked a turning point for the movement and how we might be able to support the ongoing fight for justice.Please take a listen and be sure to follow @WomenForIran on Insta and Twitter! For more information about Women for Iran, you can click here. Kiana also recommends this Twitter account and this news outlet for updates. Note: This episode was recorded in early December. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more informati

We're finally here, Witches — at our long-awaited House Elves episode. We've been talking about Dobby, Kreacher, Winky and the general house elf populalion for so many seasons and we finally have a perfect guest joining us for discussion. Jessica Marie Johnson (she/her) is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Johns Hopkins University and a Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Studies at Harvard University. She is also the Director of LifexCode: Digital Humanities Against Enclosure. Jessica is a historian of Atlantic slavery and the Atlantic African diaspora. She is the author of Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World, and, if you believe it, she used to babysit Coach!If you're a longtime listener of the show, please consider becoming a Patron before the New Year. We're hoping to reach 1000 patrons by January 1st and we're really close! For just $2 USD/month you can help us pay our producer, our apprentice, ourselves, our website costs

In the wise words of Lizzo, it's about damn time! Our latest episode is all about Sentimentality, an 18th century philosophical intervention that emerged in opposition to rationality. Hannah (whose recent book, A Sentimental Education, is all about this topic) guides the episode. We revisit our discussions on Orientalism, Animal Studies and Print Culture, before jumping into an overview of what Sentimentalism is all about— and how we might read Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows as a novel written in that literary tradition.If you like thinking about character development, intersectional feminism and the power (or lack thereof) of the written word, then this episode is for you! We also get a little meta and think through how books become sentimental for a reader. For example, how a series about friendship and the fight between good and evil inspires two lady scholars to make an entire podcast about it for a dedicated listenership of people 25 years after it was first published. Just as an example!!If you're a l

We’re taking a little break to gear up for the holiday season. So instead of enjoying a regular episode, please enjoy this episode of Comfort Creatures, a podcast hosted by Ella McLeod and Alexis B. Preston. Comfort Creatures is a show from Maximum Fun — the folks who brought you classic podcasts like My Brother, My Brother and Me, Still Buffering, The Adventure Zone and many others. In this show, Ella and Alexis bring on guests to chat about pet ownership and the power of furry friends! We were lucky enough to be guests on Comfort Creatures back in August and we had such a good time. Of course, that means we talked for far too long and so the episode was broken up into two episodes.This is Part One. After the episode if you want to hear Part Two, head over to their show feed wherever you catch your podcasts and check it out.We’ll be back in two weeks for another episode about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.To support the show, you can become a Patreon Supporter at any tier for extra perks and bonus con

In this episode, we do a deep dive into eugenics, a nineteenth-century pseudosciences that justified a lot of racist, ableist, and generally violent oppressive behaviours. We review our conversations about class, critical race theory, disability, neurodivergence, and trauma from our episodes with K. Alex, Jess Battis, Tea Garbeza, Lucia Lorenzi, and Addie Merians, before taking a close look at Cecily Devereux's Growing a Race: Nellie McClung and the Fiction of Eugenic Feminism. Tune in OR skip this one if that would be better for you! Take care of yourself first! We'll be back in two weeks with another episode about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.To support the show, you can become a Patreon Supporter at any tier for extra perks and bonus content including episodes, interviews, bloopers, comics, merch and more. If becoming a paying subscriber isn't in the cards right now, no stress! Please leave us a review instead — it truly helps sustain the show. Of course, you can always follow us on Instagram or Tw

Matt Potts is back to talk about resurrection! We first revisit theory Matt introduced to us last season on our episode about "the soul" and then consider the nature of Harry's death in the Deathly Hallows. What can we make of Harry's sacrifice? The scene in King's Cross? The conviction of the series and... (Matt said it first...!) the conviction of the New Testament! Tune in for an episode about zombies, Jesus, and Harry Potter.To support the show, you can become a Patreon Supporter at any tier for extra perks and bonus content including episodes, interviews, bloopers, comics, merch and more. If becoming a paying subscriber isn't in the cards right now, no stress! Please leave us a review instead — it truly helps sustain the show. Of course, you can always follow us on Instagram or Twitter @ohwitchplease to stay connected. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're back with a new episode on New Media! To begin, we revisit Print Culture, Critical Archival Studies and the work of Canadian theorist Marshall McLuhan before jumping into a conversation about the phonograph! Well, kind of... We take a look at Lisa Gitelman’s book Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture, to better understand how new technologies are normalized and made familiar such that we forget information is being mediated at all. We talk about Potterwatch radio, Dumbledore's deluminator, horcruxes, patronuses and more while taking a very close look at Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.To support the show, you can become a Patreon Supporter at any tier for extra perks and bonus content including episodes, interviews, bloopers, comics, merch and more. If becoming a paying subscriber isn't in the cards right now, no stress! Please leave us a review instead — it truly helps sustain the show. Of course, you can always follow us on Instagram or Twitter @ohwitchplease to stay connect

Hey Witches! We'll be back on Tuesday with our regularly scheduled episodes, but we thought we'd give you the promised sneak peek at Hannah's new book A Sentimental Education. On September 22, Hannah launched her book at Iron Dog Books through a conversation with Minelle Mahtani (Associate Professor at the Institute for Social Justice at UBC) and Lucia Lorenzi (artist and recovered academic). In this bonus episode, you'll find that conversation as well as a sneak peek of the audiobook version of A Sentimental Education (which is now available on Kobo). If you'd like to learn more about Hannah's writing, you can check out her website hannahmcgregor.com or head over to your local bookseller to scoop a copy of A Sentimental Education! You can always order it online as well anywhere you find books. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Maia Kobabe (e/em/eir) has been censored enough! We're putting this exclusive bonus interview out to the public because it was just so dang fun to record and Maia is a true gem who deserves as big an audience as we can give em. We'll be back with regular episodes in two weeks (October 18th).If you don't already know Maia, e is the author of Gender Queer and the brilliant mind behind other zines, comics, and social commentary sprinkled throughout the internet. You may recognize Maia from Instagram, Tumblr, or from the loud and constant conservative backlash around eir memoir since its publication in 2019. As you'll hear in this bonus interview, Maia is a gift to the fan communities e occupies — and e is a fan of our show (which is just a really nice thing we get to talk about a bit). To get to know Maia better, check out eir book reviews on Goodreads and Storygraph. Or take a look at eir work on Patreon and Tumblr. Happy listening and a very happy belated Banned Books Week! What a way for us to celeb

We continue our journey through Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows with another special guest, Erin Wunker! Erin is a settler scholar and an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Dalhousie University in Halifax Nova Scotia. She is the author of Notes from a Feminist Killjoy: Essays on Everyday Life and the forthcoming Routledge Introduction to 20th and 21st Century Canadian Poetry. She join us for this episode to talk about mothers in the Harry Potter series! We discuss how motherhood has been constructed over the last few centuries and what we can learn from the characterization of Petunia Dursley, Molly Weasley, and Lily Potter. We also think through subversive modes of motherhood and representations of care throughout the book, looking at Hagrid in particular.To support the show, you can become a Patreon Supporter at any tier for extra perks and bonus content including episodes, interviews, bloopers, comics, merch and more. If becoming a paying subscriber isn't in the cards right now, no st

We continue our journey through Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows with a special guest, Shira Lurie! Shira joins us to discuss historical memory in the Wizarding World. We're talking statues, stories, memorials and archives. If you enjoyed our episodes on Critical Archival Studies, Chosen One Narratives, Hauntology and Life Writing, then you'll love this episode! You can follow Shira Lurie on Twitter @ShiraLurie.Help us kick off Season 7 by joining our Patreon! You can become a Patreon Supporter at any tier for more perks and bonus content include episodes, interviews, bloopers, comics, merch and more. If becoming a paying subscriber isn't in the cards right now, no stress! Please leave us a review instead — it truly helps sustain the show. Of course, you can always follow us on Instagram or Twitter @ohwitchplease to stay connected. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, we begin Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows! We cannot believe we're already at the start of Book 7, but honestly, we're so excited to finally get into it! We decided to go back to the start and revisit 'Chosen One narratives' which we discussed in Season 1, Episode 1 of the reboot. We pull on Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism and Joseph Campbell's work about "monomyth." But, you know us, we hate letting boring old white guys go unchecked, so we also review works by Alise M. Wisniewski and Na’amen Gobert Tilahun who unpack the function of “chosen one” narratives in popular culture. Tune in for a conversation about Harry's journey as a "chosen one" and the ways the book adheres to and subverts our expectations of this western literary tradition. Start this season off right and join our Patreon! You can become a Patreon Supporter at any tier for more perks and bonus content include episodes, interviews, bloopers, comics, merch and more. If becoming a paying subscriber isn't in the cards