POTTERVERSE: A top Indian law university introduces a new course to its curriculum based on the globally successful series by J.K. Rowling.
By Guinivere Kimber, Staff Writer
Since the first publication of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in 1997, children and young adults alike devoured J.K. Rowling’s fantasy novels, escaping to the magical wizarding world of Hogwarts, and dreaming of receiving their own owl-delivered Hogwarts letter in the mail. The world of Harry Potter offered an escape, a glimpse into a world beyond our own, but Professor Shouvik Kr. Guha of the National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS) in Kolkata, India, believes the wizarding world isn’t really all that different from own.
Professor Guha explains that those reading the Harry Potter series “are being exposed to the wealth of social values and cultural mores intrinsically posited” in the literature itself and that the “underlying theme of the entire narrative” is justice. His newly developed course, entitled “An Interface between Fantasy Fiction Literature and Law: Special Focus on Rowling’s Potterverse,” offers senior students at the university the opportunity to take a step back from the typical orthodox curriculum of law school by drawing legal parallels between the wizarding world and real-life situations. In the course introduction, Professor Guha writes that many similarities can be found between Hogwarts and law school: they are both “elite institution[s] where a minority is selected to join,” both teach “grueling curriculum,” and each contain harder classes, such as Potions, and easier ones, like Muggle Studies or other courses like Professor Guha’s.
The course will cover a wide range of topics, specifically focusing on how these topics can be tied to real-world events or experiences. One topic mentioned in the course module is the comparison of the “enslavement of House Elves [and] the marginalization of Werewolves” to social and class rights in India. The curriculum also includes the role of law in a magical society, which relates to the innocence of falsely-convicted wizard Sirius Black. Professor Guha further designed the course to highlight the fact that Rowling’s government in the magical world is meant to critique that of the real world and guide students to make those same observations. By studying the “radical reordering and breaking down of barriers” in the aftermath of the final battle in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, students can break down “the social hierarchies they themselves face in the form of socioeconomic conditions, gender, race, ethnicity or religion, making law an ally instead of an enemy in their struggle.”
NUJS is, of course, not the first university to make this magical addition to its curriculum. Indiana State, Durham University, Yale, and several other universities around the world are studying the magical universe and its ethics and morals. However, Professor Guha’s course in Kolkata signifies a welcome change from the normal form of university schooling in India, where the curriculum is usually strictly regimented and process-oriented.
Perhaps this explains why the course has rapidly gained popularity. Professor Guha says he’s surprised by all of the attention and is already receiving requests to expand the maximum class size of 40. But for the lucky 40 who get to be the first to experience the new course, it’s almost as if they did receive their own Hogwarts letter, just a few years late.