Episodes Witch, Please

Well, Witches, we've reached the end of another book together. We spend this episode, among other things, revisiting the tragic squandering of Hermione's talent and expertise as part of the adventure squad, detailing Gilderoy Lockharts's luscious wardrobe and its implications, tearing up at another round of Marcelle's Devastating Fun Facts from the Harry Potter World, and digging deeper into the Weasley's class status and other lingering questions we have about the series.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Beloved bookish witches, join us for a discussion of print culture as it appears in the wizarding world. We'll unpack our own biases and beliefs about the significance of books as physical objects and how capitalism and commodification created the sentimental, coveted idea of the book many of us hold in our hearts. We'll page through Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in search of printed matter and the ways it circulates in wizarding society, how it intersects with notions of class and ideas of good and evil, and how it governs access to knowledge.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week we've brought together the Who's Who of the Wizarding World for the event of the season you won't want to miss – an episode on Celebrity Studies! Notable guests include the winner of Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile Award (five times in a row!) and Poor Famous Harry Potter, who can't even go into a bookshop without making the front page. With a little help from Colin Creevey's camera, we focus our critical lens on how celebrity is constructed in the Wizarding World and our own, what it means to be a 'reluctant celebrity', and how the fame of a certain Author Who Shall Not Be Named gives her license to publish utter nonsense and get away with it.NB: You may notice that mid-way through this episode, Marcelle's voice starts to sound different. Unfortunately, her microphone failed while recording and we couldn't find the right spell to fix it!---Citations: Trevor Parry-Giles (2011) Harry Potter and the paradoxical critique of celebrity culture, Celebrity Studies, 2:3, 305-319, DOI: 10.1080/19392397.20

Special guest, Jes Battis PhD, joins us to unpack the history of disability studies and help us understand both the characters in Harry Potter and the world they inhabit as affected by ableism.As mentioned in the episode, Jes wrote a book on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and chosen family! You can check it out here.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Beware, Witches! Deep in the belly of a dark and chilly castle lurks an abundance of secrets! In case you hadn't noticed, the Harry Potter books are chocked full of Gothic literary devices. Unraveling the mysteries of the Hogwarts castle and the cast of characters inside reveals new insights about the concepts of monstrosity, disgust, and the boundaries of social acceptability.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Season's Greetings Witches!In this most magical of seasons, we are bringing you a bright star from our archives—a holiday special featuring Neale Barnholden! We hope this fun, slightly chaotic episode brings some warmth and joy to your hearts. As this episode comes from an earlier era of Witch Please, there are some things you should know:1. Recorded back in 2015, this episode is a goofy mix of genuine and deeply ironic commentary. For example, our remarks about The Fellowship of the Ring being racist are all genuine; our remarks that a woman riding a horse unaccompanied by a man is unrealistic and lewd are DEEPLY ironic. 2. There are a number of references to and discussion of drinking (we were drinking when we recorded this episode).3. Some of our language is more ableist than we would use today (e.g. "crazy," "dumb," "blind").4. I (Marcelle) refer to baby hippogriff using the pronoun "he," which is incorrect. Eliot uses she/her pronouns.  See acast.com/privacy for pr

We have an episode for you that, in our professional opinion, is very gay. And by gay we mean inviting expansively, radically, resistantly queer readings of a text that is trying very very hard to perform heterosexuality and binary gender! We breeze by the obvious details—like Lockhart's character flaws as coded within his failure to correctly perform masculinity or Harry & Draco's flagrant obsession with each other—and into some of this text's more subversive queer potentials.This episode acknowledges the existence of sex, so use discretion if in the company of young ears! This episode also discusses the continued abuse of Harry by the Dursleys, so take care of yourselves.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Greetings Witches! We're so excited to be moving on to Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets with you! Break out your feminist reading glasses, because we're approaching this text with the tried and true (but also ever evolving) principles of feminist theory. We're returning to the origins of Witch Please and pulling from feminism's foundational texts to guide us through this second Harry Potter installment (which, by the way, contains several issues—including: parental neglect and abuse, starvation, gendered violence, violence against animals, violation of bodily autonomy, and death—so please take care of yourselves).Also, a note about feminism, women, and girls: In this episode, we'll be talking about the experiences of characters this text presents as women and girls. But when we talk about women and girls we want to make very clear that we at Witch Please have an expansive definition of what that means and are working, in our own vocabulary to find ways of talking about feminist issues without

We've arrived at the end of our journey though Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, but before we dig into the Chamber of Secrets, we have a few loose ends to tie up! This episode is full of some brand new segments that help us work through questions, concerns, musings, and future directions for discussion. We bring back a much beloved segment: Granger Danger (!!!!!!!!) in order to give some airtime to the greatest witch of her age. We spend some time unpacking a metaphorical suitcase full of wizarding fashions and Marcelle presents us with a handful of FUN!FACTS! that may or may not be true of the wizarding world. And there's more. There's always more.Thank you for sticking with us as we renewed the Witch Please spirit and found new ways of viewing this book. We look forward to having you with us as we explore book two!  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Special guest, Lucia M. Lorenzi, PhD, joins us to unpack trauma theory and helps us understand both the characters in Harry Potter and the world they inhabit as affected by traumatic events. We also explore the narrative form of the text itself—its gaps, inconsistencies, and unreliable narration as sites where trauma lives.Content warning: this episode, broadly, discusses various experiences and consequences of trauma throughout. Of particular note are discussions around child abuse and neglect, starvation, parental death, nightmares, and flashbacks. Please take care of yourselves and feel free to skip this episode if you need.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dearest Witches, gather round for some lessons in class solidarity! In this episode, we'll discuss the formation of class structure in Western society, the inherent relationship between race and class, and the ways in which the Harry Potter books reach for but don't quite deliver a vision for a cross-class uprising against the powers that be. How do some characters occupy complicated or shifting class positions? What would it take for Harry, or other characters of privilege to be true class traitors?Content warning: at 01:06:30, there is a brief mention of the history of eugenics as it pertains to Neville Longbottom's early childhood.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Snuggle up to your familiars, Witches, because today's episode is all about animals (and critical animal studies!). What distinguishes the "animal" from the "human" and why did Western society come to arrive at that distinction? How does separating humans from their fellow animals work to enforce destructive social, political, and ecological power dynamics? What do we make of the way magical and non-magical creatures (and the humans who care for them, commune with them, or use them) are portrayed throughout the Harry Potter books?Content warning: This episode includes discussion of anti-Black racism including racial stereotyping, dehumanization, and physical violence. This discussion largely occurs in the Transfiguration segment of the episode (24:22 to 39:57) and is marked by a content warning at the beginning of the episode and at the beginning of the Transfiguration segment. Please take care of yourselves and feel free to skip all or parts of this episode as needed.  See acast.com/privacy for pr

In this episode, we unravel the many layers of Orientalist tropes that permeate the Harry Potter world. How do some not-so-subtle visual and narrative cues--turbans, hooked noses, and mysterious powers from the "East" tell readers who to fear, dislike, and distrust in these books? How can we heighten our awareness of tropes like these and call out these negative portrayals when we see them?  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It’s FINALLY HERE! In honor of Hogwarts day, September 1st, we present to you the first day of class you’ve always dreamed of from your two favourite lady scholars: Witch, Please | Ep. 1, The Chosen One. Our first episode goes back to the very beginning–to the concept of origin stories themselves–to explore how and why Harry Potter fits into a long tradition of “chosen one” narratives. Harry, we learn, is a very special boy in all the ways English literature tells us special boys ought to be. Harry is a hero, following the tidy path of the classical hero’s journey. But what are the limitations of building characters and building worlds this way? What kinds of stories and perspectives are missing when authors rely on such tried tropes? Join us for a thorough unpacking of Harry’s special-boy-hero-complex and don’t forget to prepare your quills and parchment–you may want to take notes.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

BIG NEWS, WITCHES! Through a brand new partnership with Not Sorry Productions (the brilliant team behind Harry Potter and the Sacred Text), we’re coming back! New and better than ever, which is to say, produced by somebody else and not actively losing money. W O W.Speaking of not losing money, if you’d like to support this reboot, check out our new Patreon! Rewards include unedited audio from the first season, bonus interviews, Q&As, and movie watch-alongs!Enjoy our extremely goofy teaser/reboot announcement, and meet us back here on September 1 for the first episode of the brand new Witch, Please!  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

WE ARE GETTING ROGUER EVERY EPISODE TBQHSo this one’s on time, but witches? It is pretty. silly. We sat down, in the same room, with our favourite guy-with-a-film-degree, and we talked about the fan-made prequel film Voldemort: Origins of the Heir. If you don’t mind spoilers, this Telegraph review will set the tone for the episode.This episode contains fewer sound effects than usual because it was too hard to fit them in between all the laughter. It also contains an above average amount of us being delighted with ourselves. Strap in!OH P.S. there is brand new merch in our store with more to come, so go get your Malcoy and #NoTallMen swag and hold out for even more in the future!http://ohwitchplease.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Witch-Please-Goes-Rogue-On-Prequels.mp3Download this Fan-Made Episode (because we are clearly fans of ourselves)   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

OH MY GOLLY WE ARE SO ROGUE IT IS RUUUUDE.But we are ever grateful for your patience and love, dear listeners! This episode comes to you after much travel and celebration and exhaustion and desperately-needed rest on the part of your hosts. It means the world to us that you’re so chill about the lag since S03E01. (Also, time is just a social construct so, like, what even is a fortnight?)This episode contains the audio recoding from Marcelle’s keynote lecture at the 86th Annual ABQLA Conference. (Librarians are AWESOME! I had the BEST time!!!) Maybe you want to scroll through the slides as you listen? This is a grand idea because our erstwhile tech support Trevor Chow-Fraser made them and they are beauuuuuutiful. You can find a PDF at the bottom of this post. (Just assume it’s a new slide every minute or so; sorry there’s no indicator of when to flip the page…)In this lightly edited episode, Hannah and Marcelle get heavily silly. We hope you enjoy!http://ohwitchplease.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/WitchPlease_

OKAY IT IS NOT JUNE ANYMORE SO THIS IS LATE but we’re back with a brand new episode for this, the final season of Witch, Please: WITCH, PLEASE GONE ROGUE! We’re coming to you straight from The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, except that we didn’t want to bring our recorder into the park and then we were too tired to record a proper episode that night and then we got really busy for a couple of months but LISTEN. It’s a great episode. Just trust us, okay?Mega extra special thanks to Julie Frances for being our Orlando guide and to Raimi and Steph and the Baby Hippogriff and Nana Hippogriff for making the trip so special, and to ALL OF YOU who donated for making it possible, and especially to Katie Robison for setting up the GoFundMe! EVERYONE IS GREAT!http://ohwitchplease.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/S3E1-Wizarding-World.mp3Download this rogue episode  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

image credit: Melbourne Writers FestivalWell, witches, it’s that time of year again for the first time (technically the second time): time to say “later witches” and actually mean “see you in a few months.” This is our first ever (intentional) Season Finale, but don’t desair! We’ll be back again next summer BIGGER, BOLDER, and SEXIER THAN EVER! You’re gonna love it. So, until then… later witches xoxo.http://ohwitchplease.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/S02E08_WitchPleaseAndTheMelbourneWritersFestival.mp3Download this Season Finale  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Image of courtesy of BuzzfeedEpisode CW: discussion of intimate partner abuseTo record this episode, Hannah and Marcelle sat in a bed together for two hours with a singularly chill-less cat and had wildly divergent opinions about a book, sort of at one another, while the cat purred way too loudly.Does that make it sound fun? TRUST US IT IS. If nothing else, we can promise the horniest episode we’ve ever delivered, as we sit down to talk about Rainbow Rowell’s Carry On and hash out the differences between fan fiction, intertext, and adaptation; the gayness of various cover designs; and why traditional narrative forms are so deeply satisfying.Hang around for a new #trywitches challenge and an enthusiastic installment of #witchpleasetellme. Take it away, Todd!http://ohwitchplease.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Witch-Please-and-Some-Other-Novel.mp3Download this episode about some other book that totally isn’t Harry PotterCredit: the exciting plot summary music is “Epic” from bensound.com. Also