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Material Girls

Book 3, Ep.4 | Disability and Resistant Readings with with Tea Gerbeza

Material Girls

Rehak Hannah

Vanessa Zoltan, Arts, Harry Potter, Books, Aubrey Gordon, Hannah Mcgregor, Pop Culture, Cultural Cricism, Society & Culture, Feminism, Witch Please, Marcelle Kosman, Tv & Film, Fantasy, Not Sorry

4.81.3K Ratings

🗓️ 27 April 2021

⏱️ 56 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Greetings, Witches!


In this episode, we're once again applying a disability studies lens to the wizarding world. This time, we're looking at questions of access, accommodation, and community support for characters we might read as disabled in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. We're joined by disabled poet and visual artist, Tea Gerbeza, who is an MFA in Writing candidate at the University of Saskatchewan. With Tea, we dive deep into the interpretation of Remus Lupin as a disabled character whose existence and bodily difference as a werewolf marks him in sharp contrast to normative wizarding society. We explore alternate futures for Lupin where, instead of social isolation and mistreatment, Lupin is met with the resources and accommodation he needs. We discuss the vital importance of community support for disabled people that goes beyond the limitations of formal institutions. For Tea, to read Lupin as disabled is to resist the failure of this text to meaningfully include disabled perspectives, and we invite you to join us in this expansive, resistant reading!


Be sure to follow Witch, Please on Twitter and Instagram @ohwitchplease and let us know what you think of the episode through a review on Apple Podcasts. As always, you can join our Patreon for exclusive content including bonus interviews, Q&As, Watch Alongs and more — our tiers range from $2-$13!


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Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and welcome to which please, a fortnightly podcast about the Harry Potter world.

0:09.2

I'm Marcel Cosmon and I'm Hannah McGregor and Marcel, we have a guest!

0:15.1

A guest!

0:16.1

Oh my gosh!

0:17.6

We sure do!

0:19.4

Joining us today is Tea Garbesa.

0:21.8

Tea, she, her pronouns, is a disabled poet, editor, sometimes scholar, and paper-quilling

0:28.7

artist.

0:29.7

Paper-quilling artist?

0:31.7

Whoa, okay, she's a current MFA in writing candidate at the University of Saskatchewan

0:37.7

and holds an MA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Regina.

0:42.4

Her undergraduate honors thesis work focused on remiss looping, disability, and ableism

0:48.0

in the Harry Potter series.

0:49.8

So you can guess why we have her on today.

0:52.7

Amazing!

0:53.7

So Tea, help us get to know you a little bit better.

0:57.4

And do you tell us about your relationship to the Harry Potter series?

1:01.8

Yes, absolutely.

1:03.6

So for my own reading perspective, I'm a disabled person with scoliosis and scoliosis-related

1:10.1

disabilities, and someone who lives with chronic pain and high functioning anxiety.

1:16.0

So these are perspectives that I bring to reading Harry Potter since, you know, childhood.

1:22.8

So in addition, I'm also a poet and visual artist.

...

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