Category: Conference talks

Granger Leadership Academy 2019: Hogwarts House comments

Hello, alums of Granger Leadership Academy 2019!  Thank you to those who were part of our discussion on March 23, “The Functional, Thriving Activist.”  A few people have asked about the descriptions of ourselves, by House, that some fellow volunteers and I came up with when we were figuring out effective ways to work together. 

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“And my soul, Dumbledore?”:  The Snape-Dumbledore Relationship

Note:  Dear good people, do not do what I did.  Do not throw out everything you prepared for writing a 20-minute talk on the day before the talk is scheduled because you’ve just realized that there’s something you really have to write about, so you have to scrap everything and start over.  That was not a

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Cursed Child: Six Allegories

Modified from comments delivered at LeakyCon, Dallas, TX, August 10, 2018.   Welcome to “Coming to Terms with Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.”  My name is Lorrie Kim and I’m the author of Snape:  A Definitive Reading.  I got the idea for this session because I was seeing a lot of Potter fans feeling conflict

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Snape Celebration! [and trivia] at LeakyCon 2018

This is a modified version of a panel titled “Snape Celebration! Talk and Trivia” delivered at LeakyCon, Dallas, TX, on August 11, 2018. Welcome to a celebration of Snape.  I love Snape, but I’m going a little dark in this talk. Here are some of the complicated reasons I celebrate Snape. He’s not materialistic.  Like

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LeakyCon2017: Notes from Attendees

On September 2, 2017, I teamed up with Professor Shannon Sauro of Snapecast to present “A Celebration of All Things Snape” at LeakyCon 2017.  We asked audience members to jot down notes or questions if there were things they wanted to discuss.  Here are some of the notes we didn’t manage to get to, along with

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Background Remarks: Grindelwald, Fantastic Beasts, and Gay Representation

Note:  This was how I introduced a discussion session about gay representation in Potterverse at MISTI-Con.  These remarks were meant to provide general background only and to get the conversation started, not to be analytical or comprehensive.  — LK Delivered Saturday, May 21, 2017 at MISTI-Con.   Twenty years since Philosopher’s Stone was first published.  Seven books in

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Introductory Comments at MISTI-Con Snape Discussion

for Snape:  A Definitive Reading Delivered at MISTI-Con, Laconia, New Hampshire, on Sunday, May 21, 2017 It’s been 10 years since Nagini bit Snape and the fandom still fights about this character.  Yet we all read the same books and watched the same movies.  It’s not like there are two series of Harry Potter books,

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The Obscurus in Potterverse and BBC Sherlock

This 5-minute talk was presented at a panel about the film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them at 221B Con, April 9, 2017. Newt Scamander says about what’s in his case:  “Please don’t hurt those creatures—there is nothing in there that is dangerous.” What do we know about how Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald?  We know it

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Snape, Machiavelli, and the Redemption of Slytherin

Summary: By giving Snape the matronymic “Prince,” J.K. Rowling hinted that Machiavelli’s The Prince might hold some keys to her own intentions about this character. A fresh look at Machiavelli gives definitive answers about whether Snape redeemed himself in the end, what makes something Dark Magic, if it had to be a Slytherin Headmaster to defeat Voldemort,

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