Welcome!
Welocome to JKR2012, a webproject created as part of the course Children’s Literature 325. Our task was to create a Multi-genre Research Paper where we were to research one of the authors we have read throughout the course and create eight creative, substantial, and thoughtful pieces within different genres connecting to the research.
We chose to do our project on J. K. Rowling, from whom we read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in this course. We chose Rowling because were both fans of her Harry Potter series, and we thought the witty, creative, intelligent style of writing Rowling employs would be easy to transform into good and substantial pieces.
When starting out research for the project we had a few research questions in mind. All of Rowling’s novels can be categorized as fantasy, a genre that is not always considered to have literary merit. We wanted to figure out 1) what makes Rowling’s books worth teaching?; and 2) does the books have any historical or cultural references? We also wanted to look at 3) where did Rowling get inspiration to write such fantastical books?; and lastly 4) What controversy is surrounding her works, and how can we meet these challenges as teachers?
As we did our research we discovered that there are a large number of critical essays and articles confirming that there is more to Rowling’s works than fiddling with wands. These confirm that her books carry substantial themes of friendship, bravery, fear, death, love, loyalty, sacrifice, and much more, that makes the books worth teaching. Though our research we also found many historical and cultural references to themes like fascism, class systems, slavery, and feminism. We learned that Rowling took inspiration from her own life to create the world within her books, using friends and even herself as inspiration from characters, and using emotions she had herself experienced to make the books more realistic. There were also some texts that criticized Rowling for integrating witchcraft, violence, racism, and anti-government sentiments, and are prepared to meet these criticisms in our classrooms.
We had a lot of fun creating this project, and we found our research to be interesting and informative. It was at times hard to find a way to integrate heavy research or information into pieces we wanted to be entertaining and fun for the viewer/reader, but we still think we managed to do so successfully. Feel free to browse our genres in the tabs to the left, or look above for bibliography, citations, or to download endnotes.
-Hadier Jassim and Julianne Dreyer
We chose to do our project on J. K. Rowling, from whom we read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in this course. We chose Rowling because were both fans of her Harry Potter series, and we thought the witty, creative, intelligent style of writing Rowling employs would be easy to transform into good and substantial pieces.
When starting out research for the project we had a few research questions in mind. All of Rowling’s novels can be categorized as fantasy, a genre that is not always considered to have literary merit. We wanted to figure out 1) what makes Rowling’s books worth teaching?; and 2) does the books have any historical or cultural references? We also wanted to look at 3) where did Rowling get inspiration to write such fantastical books?; and lastly 4) What controversy is surrounding her works, and how can we meet these challenges as teachers?
As we did our research we discovered that there are a large number of critical essays and articles confirming that there is more to Rowling’s works than fiddling with wands. These confirm that her books carry substantial themes of friendship, bravery, fear, death, love, loyalty, sacrifice, and much more, that makes the books worth teaching. Though our research we also found many historical and cultural references to themes like fascism, class systems, slavery, and feminism. We learned that Rowling took inspiration from her own life to create the world within her books, using friends and even herself as inspiration from characters, and using emotions she had herself experienced to make the books more realistic. There were also some texts that criticized Rowling for integrating witchcraft, violence, racism, and anti-government sentiments, and are prepared to meet these criticisms in our classrooms.
We had a lot of fun creating this project, and we found our research to be interesting and informative. It was at times hard to find a way to integrate heavy research or information into pieces we wanted to be entertaining and fun for the viewer/reader, but we still think we managed to do so successfully. Feel free to browse our genres in the tabs to the left, or look above for bibliography, citations, or to download endnotes.
-Hadier Jassim and Julianne Dreyer