The Department of Anthropology has recently created a Diversity Initiative - a group of staff, graduate students, and faculty - who meet regularly to work on issues related to diversity and inclusion in the Department of Anthropology.
One of the aims of the Initiative is to increase dialogue in our Department on these issues. In order to achieve this, we are instituting a regular Happy Hour discussion at Adele's on a variety of topics where diversity and inclusion are central themes. Rather than academic discourses, we would like to focus on topics and issues in popular media, as a way to broaden our thinking and discussion on what diversity means, how to be more inclusive in our thinking, and how to apply what we learn to our everyday lives. These discussions are intended to be a safe space to talk and exchange ideas, and we invite everyone in the department to attend.
Our first Happy Hour discussion will be held on Wednesday, April 13 at 3 p.m. at Adele's. Adele's has HH specials including: $2 domestic beers, $4 wines, $2 soft drinks, and appetizers between $2-$4. Our topic for discussion will be Harry Potter and cultural appropriation.
To provide some context for our discussion, as you may know this fall a new movie set in the wizarding world of J.K. Rowling, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them will be released. The movie is set in 1920s New York. In preparation, J. K. Rowling announced a new series of stories that will fill in some historical blanks in her fictional world. The History of Magic in North America debuted on the author’s website Pottermore last month, covering a number of topics including:
—The U.S. Hogwarts, Ilvermorny
—Skin-walkers, a Native American legend
—The Salem witch trials, a formative event for the country’s national magical identity
—Our Ministry of Magic, the Magical Congress of the United States of America
The stories are meant to set the stage for the arrival in New York of the protagonist in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and the events that take place in the movie.
Since this release, Rowling has been accused of appropriating the living traditions of Indigenous peoples by writing about the Navajo legend of skinwalkers.
Some links on the topic are listed below, but please do not feel limited to these to explore the topic.
Native Appropriations (blog written by a Cherokee anthropologist at Harvard & Brown), “Magic in North America”: The Harry Potter franchise veers too close to home: http://nativeappropriations.com/2016/03/magic-in-north-america-the-harry-potter-franchise-veers-too-close-to-home.html
