Material Girls

Witches, meet us at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. We're returning to the rich territory of animal studies to understand the limitations of human vs. animal hierarchies. We'll spend some time with marginal figures in the wizarding world who cross the human/animal divide, challenge social and political norms, and invite us into new ways of being. In particular, we'll be spending quite some time...

Greetings, Witches! As always, we're eternally grateful for the time you spend listening with us. In this episode, we're unpacking the mechanics of time and time- travel as they play out in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. We identify the connections between western time -travel narratives and the industrial revolution and the infinitely insidious force of capitalism. We plunge into the p...

Attention, class! This is the episode all of you superbly studious witches have been waiting for! We draw upon our own expertise as longtime students and educators to discuss the, frankly, wild and unpredictable pedagogical approaches of Hogwarts faculty. Have any Hogwarts faculty managed to create affirming and generative learning environments, even within a school that routinely places students...

Greetings, Witches! We’re excited to bring you a special something from our partners at Not Sorry Productions. The Real Question is a new podcast from Vanessa Zoltan and Casper ter Kuile, the magical minds behind Harry Potter and the Sacred Text . Like us, they’re two friends who like to put their heads together and pour over their favorite texts as they navigate life’s questions. In every episode...

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' 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 We...

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 will page through Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in search of printed m...

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,...

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 . Be sure to follow Witch, Please on Twitter and Instagram @ohwitchplease and let us kn...

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. Be sure to follow W...

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 goo...

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 o...

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...

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...

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...

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 c...

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 n...

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? Be sur...

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...

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 inclu...

WE ARE GETTING ROGUER EVERY EPISODE TBQH So 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 effect...

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 epi...

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 coupl...

image credit: Melbourne Writers Festival Well, 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...

Image of courtesy of Buzzfeed Episode CW: discussion of intimate partner abuse To 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 epi...

photo credit: @wildflowersyeg Good evening witches and magicians and wizards of all ages! Welcome to this evening’s musical performance of Witch, Please! This fornight has Marcelle “in the field” interviewing Konstantine Kurelias and Amanda Brace, two staff members of the Winspear Centre , about the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra’s enchanting production of The Music of Harry Potter! As a special trea...