Terminus! (among other things)-

[mary_j_59]

Well, we are back, and we had a blast! Draco and the Malfoys like us! Kids were asking us to sign their T-shirts! Eek! More under the cut, because I'm rambling a bit.

I could go on for ages about the conference, which I enjoyed *much* more than I expected to - will write a longer entry later. For now, I've just got to say that I had an absolute blast at the Snape panel, "Good Night, Sweet Prince". The general consensus was that, where Snape is concerned, Rowling's book is wiser than she is, and she did write him as a hero - but does not recognize it. One of the women spoke of him as a knight (exactly how I see him!) and as batman! And several people came up to me later to tell me how much they had enjoyed my presentation, including sinick (I did the classic "squee" and embraced her!) and amydmartin, a friend of Cardigrl's.

Then Amy Snow (aka Romilda Vane and the Chocolate Cauldrons) did a podcast in the park of lots of wizard rockers - that was a blast, too. And we did lots of great non-conference things - Sue the dinosaur; a great exhibit on mythic creatures; a tour of the city by bus and boat; the Sears tower with a lot of wizard rockers; the art museum; the aquarium - it's hard to believe we were only there six days. Deirdre has put a photo album up at the Gringotts grrls myspace page, and it sums up the trip really well.

But gosh, were there some fascinating discussions! I'm afraid I got a bit cranky with a grandma who is a Rowling and Ginny fan - it's true Ginny is not all bad, but, at the time, I just couldn't admit it. I wish I had managed to mention the couple of scenes in which I did like Ginny. Oh, well. I couldn't think of them at the time.

Still more fascinating was a professor called Jeffrey Rudski, who did a presentation on disability in Harry Potter, and has an autistic son. He believes the way Rowling treats the disabled in these books is absolutely unconscionable - and I think he's right. He said, when I was raving (again) about her misuse of Christian symbolism, "It's Christianity as understood by an atheist." What an interesting comment! I'd agree that her core beliefs, as I glean them from this text, have nothing to do with anything I recognize as Christianity. He disagreed that she is Calvinist, pointing out that the Calvinists *do not know*, and do not pretend to know, who is saved and who is damned. Rowling's mentality is quite different - she knows. Gryffindors are the elect. Interesting.

That's my brief and spontaneous summary of some of the high points. There were a lot, really, and the train trip was fun, too, though it took us nearly 24 hours to get back to NY state from Chicago. Will try for a more extended/coherent summary later.

Comments

[alchemia.livejournal.com]

i wanted to go Rudski's presentation and unfortunatly couldn't; I'd really like to know more if you have other notes/thoughts on it, esp since he had some perspective as a person whose family is affected by autism; i was diagnosed autistic in childhood and am high enough functioning now that I could tolerate such an event with a lot of opiates and frequent hiding in the hotel room.

[bluestocking79.livejournal.com]

That's a very interesting point about Rowling's use/abuse of Calvinist ideas. It is a perversion of those tenets, and I wonder if this is just one more instance of Rowling picking up something that looked shiny to her and using it without really considering the implications and troubling herself to understand it in depth.

I'm so glad you had a good time at Terminus, though! Everything I've heard makes it sound like great fun.

[alchemia.livejournal.com]

He said, when I was raving (again) about her misuse of Christian symbolism, "It's Christianity as understood by an atheist." What an interesting comment! I'd agree that her core beliefs, as I glean them from this text, have nothing to do with anything I recognize as Christianity. He disagreed that she is Calvinist, pointing out that the Calvinists *do not know*, and do not pretend to know, who is saved and who is damned. Rowling's mentality is quite different - she knows. Gryffindors are the elect. Interesting.

Interesting, yeah. I wish I got to this one!

[puckling.livejournal.com]

Sounds very exciting. I can't wait to hear more.

[bohemianspirit.livejournal.com]

I didn't realize you had gone to Terminus. That explains why you haven't posted lately. ;-) I'm glad someone was talking some SnapeSense at this one! Every person I've talked to in real life agrees that the obvious reading of DH is that Severus Snape emerged as the hero of the series and turned out to be a good guy, after all. It was only when JKR started saying, no, that's not it, at all, and contradicting what we all read in the last book that my estimation of her started to go downhill. Not that DH was a literary classic, to begin with, but my estimation of it was a lot more positive after my first reading than it has become over the past year.

He said, when I was raving (again) about her misuse of Christian symbolism, "It's Christianity as understood by an atheist."

It strikes me, rather, as Christianity as understood by a fundamentalist: reflecting a very simplistic, biblical-literalist, God-killed-Jesus-cause-he-was-ticked-off-at-wicked-humanity fundamentalism that degenerates into fetishizing death and bloodshed as "magical." In Matthew Fox's terms, it would be "fall-redemptive" theology (and a very crude version of it, at that) rather than "creation-centered" spirituality which is life-affirming and sees people as sacred. Atheists, on the other hand, are sometimes more savvy about theology than many of the professed believers! (Not the least reason being that a fair number of them were raised in one Christian faith or another.)

Anyway, personally, I would prefer to keep the discussion of the HP books to a broader sense of spirituality and ethics, because the attributes of compassion, mercy, kindness, and the valuation of people belong to all healthy spiritual paths, not just the ones identifying as "Christian." And, as we see, not everything labeled "Christian" reflects a healthy spirituality.