Although Andromeda Tonks is not extremely present in the Harry Potter series, the “subtle” character is Alexis Bennett’s favorite woman in the series.
The Women’s Center, in partnership with the Ohio University Harry Potter Alliance, will conduct a family-friendly trivia game highlighting women in the wizarding world of Harry Potter as part of Women’s History Month. The event will take place Thursday at 7:30 p.m. and is free.
Attendees will be put in groups of three, but families will not be split up, Geneva Murray, the director of the Women’s Center, said. The team that wins the trivia game will receive a set of pillows with each of the Hogwarts house crests — Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin — embroidered on them. The youngest participant will also win a prize, as well as the attendee with the best costume in general and the best villain costume.
“We wanted a Women’s History Month event where little kids could come in Harry Potter outfits … and to be able to appreciate why it is that we’re looking at women in a form that you can digest easily,” Murray said.
Bennett, the current treasurer and future vice president of the Harry Potter Alliance, is hoping discussion will “occur naturally” during the game, she said. The trivia will include questions about the characters, women who worked on the film and the actresses from the film. Bennett and Murray looked at almost every aspect of Harry Potter that featured a woman and made a question.
Bennett hopes to show how the characters have different aspects to their personalities, she said. One character Bennett drew attention to was Fleur Delacour, who is a beautiful woman capable of fighting.
“We are hoping to kind of talk about women in leadership positions,” Bennett, a sophomore studying english and world religion, said. “We want to look at women as being multi-faceted — as being more than just one literary trope.”
Though Olivia Salatin, a sophomore studying health services administration, just started watching the film series a couple of weeks ago, she likes the “badass” women. Her favorite characters right now are Hermione Granger and Professor Minerva McGonagall.
Salatin would go to the event, she said, because it seems cool to talk about women in the Harry Potter universe.
“I mean you see guy superheroes, so seeing strong women in another context is really cool,” she said.
By looking at the Harry Potter series, Murray said people will be able to analyze a series they might be familiar with to see if women are represented and how they are represented.
“Harry Potter is one of those cultural things that spans generations and that people can really see themselves reflected in whatever age it was they read Harry Potter,” she said. “When you’re a little bit older and you’re going back and looking with a critical lens, I think programs like this will help in terms of thinking about books you love differently.”
