NUJS Introduces Harry Potter Elective Course

NUJS Kolkata has introduced a Harry Potter elective course. The course titled ‘An interface between Fantasy Fiction Literature and Law: Special focus on Rowling's Potterverse’ will be offered as an elective to the students of the 4th and the 5th year of the B.A LL.B (Hons.) programme in the winter semester (2018-19) by faculty member Mr. Shouvik Kumar Guha.

The course will be aiming to cover the following areas:

• Legal Traditions and Institutions in Potterverse (including role of law and rule of law in a magical society, moral choice and liberty in Potterverse and the role of bureaucracy in the Ministry of Magic)


• Crimes and Punishments in Potterverse (including Unforgivable Curses, Wizengamot Trials, Innocence of Sirius Black and Persecution of Tom Riddle)


• Morality, Social Values, Identity and Class Rights in Potterverse (including (human) dignity and enslavement of House Elves, marginalization of Werewolves, Giants, Centaurs and Merpeople, Mudbloods and Squibs, militant literacy and misuse of texts)


• The Potterverse Economy (including Gringotts, magic of money and economic growth and entrepreneurship)


• Politics in Potterverse (including bases of authority, terror and counterterror, resistance, intelligence and secret societies)


• Contracts and Agency in Potterverse (including Unbreakable Vows, Agents of Good or Servants of Evil, express will and loyalty, Snape and the Order of Phoenix, Dumbledore’s Man through and through)


• Family in Potterverse (including blood relationship, familial ties, testamentary law)


• Miscellaneous (including Quidditch and sports law, religion and destiny, Rowling’s legal battles and reflections, philosophical significance of Potterverse characters, technological anarchism & the hi-tech, low-tech wizarding world, archetypes and stereotypes, from ‘Mars is Bright Tonight’ to Horcruxes in Faerie Land and ‘Just behind the Veil’: Influences of Dante, Edmund Spenser and George MacDonald on Potterverse)

The tentative course outline can be accessed here.

For further information, click here.