When you didn’t receive your Hogwarts letter when you turned 11 you probably assumed that was the end of your Harry Potter dreams. Well, you were wrong.
A university is offering a course dedicated to the magical laws of Harry Potter. Kolkata’s National University of Juridical Sciences, offers its next generation of lawyers an interesting take on the profession through a course entitled “An Interface Between Fantasy Fiction Literature and Law: Special focus on Rowling’s Potterverse”.
The course analyzes real-life situations through the legal aspects of wizarding. The enslavement of house elves and werewolves are used as an example of class and social rights. The curriculum includes Quidditch, sports law at Hogwarts, the rule of law in a magical society, Wizengamot trials and the innocence of Sirius Black.
According to Independent.co.uk, the creator of the course, Professor Shouvik Kumar Guha, says it is an “experiment” to “encourage creative thinking.”:
In our current system, we simply tell students the black letter of law. Will they be able to apply pre-existing laws to situations that have never come up before? You can also see so many examples of how media is subverted by political institutions in the Potter books and see parallels in the real world. Rowling’s universe talks a lot about how legal institutions are failing in some scenarios.
The course covers 45 hours of discussion-based teaching and will be offered as an elective to senior students at the university. The course has reached its capacity of 40 students with calls to increase the class size.
Durham University was the first college in the UK to offer a class on Harry Potter. Students can study a module on the social and cultural context of Harry Potter and the reason behind its popularity.
