UCF English Professor Tison Pugh teaches the big-name literature classes: Shakespeare. Chaucer. Rowling.<\/p>\n
Yes, Rowling, as in J.K. Rowling, creator of Harry Potter. As you might guess, it\u2019s the Rowling class that fills up the fastest. \u201cWe can learn a lot from the Harry Potter books,\u201d says Pugh, a voracious reader who knows a good literature lesson when he sees one. Pugh acknowledges that after he read the first novel in the series, The Sorcerer\u2019s Stone<\/em>, he had no idea he would one day be teaching Harry Potter courses to college students.<\/p>\n You could say I was late to the party.<\/strong> No one knew Harry Potter would be such a big hit.<\/strong> Some might question why we have a Harry Potter class. Class time is not trivia time. I\u2019ve read the entire series eight times.<\/strong> My favorite book is probably The Goblet of Fire<\/em>. We can learn a lot from the author, J.K. Rowling. The students motivate me<\/em> to think, too.<\/strong> There\u2019s often a waiting list for the class.<\/strong> Boredom has no place in a literature class.<\/strong> Then there\u2019s the money.<\/strong> It doesn’t take long to fill the 100 seats in Tison Pugh’s English literature course, Harry Potter Studies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":89767,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"lazy_load_responsive_images_disabled":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2862,17197],"tu_author":[],"class_list":["post-84795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","tag-literature","tag-tison-pugh"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nHonestly, I thought of Harry Potter as a book for kids and teens. I finally picked it up to see what all the fuss was about. Any skepticism vanished after I read the very first line \u2014 \u201cMr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.\u201d It\u2019s one of the best opening lines in all of literature, and it\u2019s my job to read a lot of literature.<\/p>\n
\nScholastic won the U.S. rights to publish the books for about $100,000. The craze just snuck up on us. People like me opened that first book and were swept into this strange world of wizards. We were hooked.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>It\u2019s just as meaningful as my literature classes on Chaucer or the King Arthur legends. The character development and trajectory of plots are so deep. I can use that to challenge students to become better thinkers. By the end of a semester, students have not only read books totaling 4,000 pages, they\u2019ve analyzed them \u2014 and they\u2019ve done a lot of analytical writing themselves.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Many of my students have never read a Harry Potter book, even though they\u2019ve grown up around the series from birth. But they take the course to be motivated to read all the books for the first time.<\/p>\n
\nBut students sometimes remind me of details that I\u2019ve forgotten or missed. It\u2019s like a student asking a history teacher about the specific date of an event. You learn not to be embarrassed if you don\u2019t remember the answer. Again, our goal is to inspire critical thinking and analysis.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>The story has a plot you cannot leave. It took me about 16 hours to read 800 pages. The book really makes you think \u2014 and that makes it a great teaching tool.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>She isn\u2019t just a fantasy novelist. She\u2019s a voracious reader, and you can see her interest in British literature embedded into the Harry Potter stories. There are deep levels to the plots, yet they aren\u2019t difficult to follow. Peeling back those layers, that\u2019s the challenge for the class.<\/p>\n
\nThey\u2019ll draw parallels between the details in the books to actual cultural issues of the day. Or they\u2019ll suggest what Rowling might have been thinking during the train ride that supposedly inspired the books (which, if the legend is true, must have been a multi-year train ride considering the depth of the stories).<\/p>\n
\nWe have 100 seats and they\u2019re usually full. Most English courses at the 300 level have 30-40 students. So this one is popular coming in. Hopefully, it\u2019s popular going out.<\/p>\n
\nTo me, this is exciting. And remember, I have to engage 100 young adults, which would be impossible if I didn\u2019t love the subject matter. I hope they would agree that my enthusiasm shows.<\/p>\n
\nThere are so many students that I divide them into teams or Harry Potter \u201chouses\u201d: Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff and Slytherin. In each class I give them a challenge inspired by one of the books, such as coming up with as many connections to fairytales as they can in eight minutes. At the end of the semester, the winning house receives $100 to celebrate their victory. It gets their attention and makes them think. That\u2019s what it\u2019s all about. A little competition doesn\u2019t hurt either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"