Stephen Ramsay’s discussion of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves addresses the topic of subjectivity in her novel. He does this to understand an alternative method of criticism, in rooting out Woolf’s subjective elements from her objective discourse. In this approach, Ramsay utilizes algorithmic text analysis to conduct this separation.

Heilman and Donaldson’s “From Sexist to (sort-Of) Feminist: Representations of Gender in the Harry Potter Series” addresses gender representation within the novel collection. They do so in order to outline the important issues, trans-morphing them into scholarly material. By doing so, they can make use of the enormous readership of the series to introduce real-world issues in a classroom environment. This unites students, parents, and teachers in the discussion on such topics as inequality and human rights.

Sally Hunt’s essay on the “Representations of Gender and Agency in the Harry Potter Series” takes on a similar approach to that of Heilman and Donaldson. Because of the prevalence of the controversy on gender, scholars such as Hunt are able to find ways of linking popular media, as the Harry Potter book-series, with dominant political issues. By doing so they can help others understand the hidden significances portrayed by the author in the stories they knew for so long. Through unravelling these topics, new frontiers are explored and discovered.

SOURCES

Ramsay, S. (2003). “Toward an Algorithmic Criticism.” Literary and Linguistic Computing 18: 167–74.

Heilman, Elizabeth E., and Trevor Donaldson. n.d. “From Sexist to (sort-Of) Feminist: Representations of Gender in the Harry Potter Series.”

Hunt, Sally. 2015. “Representations of Gender and Agency in the Harry Potter Series.”