“WGS on Wednesdays” returned to ETSU with a talk from Dr. Brittany Wilkins on using Harry Potter to talk about social justice issues.
“WGS on Wednesdays” is a series of monthly talks organized by the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department at ETSU.
According to Dr. Chelsea Wessels, the interim director of the department, these talks are focused on “highlighting work on gender and sexuality across campus.”
WGS on Wednesdays meets on Zoom on the first Wednesday of every month at noon. Each session has a different speaker and a different topic, and guest speakers and topics will be announced at the website above.
This month’s talk was led by Wilkins, a professor from the social work department at ETSU. Wilkins was able to combine her love of Harry Potter with her passion for social work for this installment of the WGS on Wednesdays series. Her talk was centered on the growing popularity of using popular culture to teach students about social justice issues.
Wilkins shared how she used Harry Potter in this way in a past class and its effects on students.
While some may be concerned and confused about the use of Harry Potter to address social issues, due to its problematic author and extreme lack of diversity, Wilkins emphasized that while the work cannot be seen apart from these issues, the series has many qualities which makes it a great medium for talking about social justice issues.
Some of the social justice topics that are explored are systems of power and oppression, activism and advocacy, childhood trauma, fear as a political tactic, victim blaming and disability. By examining these issues in the context of popular culture and considering their intersectionality, students are able to more easily understand and identify these issues in the real world. In this way the pop culture becomes a vehicle for the students’ understanding of various social justice issues.
Wilkins hopes that this subject will continue to gain traction and some day become a regularly offered class at ETSU. She said that she is hopeful for this becoming a reality in spring of 2023.
Wilkins’ full WGS on Wednesdays talk will soon be available on the organization’s YouTube channel. Past WGS on Wednesdays talks can be accessed on ETSU’s Women on Wednesdays page.
