October 14, 2016
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:
Cristina Diaz
Media and Community Relations Manager
215.753.3664
Harry Potter Weekend Returns to Chestnut Hill College
Philadelphia, PA – Chestnut Hill College will host its 7th annual Philadelphia Brotherly Love Cup Quidditch tournament, and its 5th annual Harry Potter Academic Conference from October 20-22 in part with the Harry Potter Festival in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia.
5th Harry Potter Academic Conference
The Harry Potter Academic Conference is a non-profit annual academic conference hosted by Chestnut Hill College. The Conference provides a forum for scholarly presentations arising from J.K. Rowling’s literature. For a third year, Chestnut Hill College is pleased to host a special high school section of the Conference on Thursday, October 20, at 6:30 p.m. Scholarly presentations will continue on Friday, October 21 at 8:30 a.m. The registration fee is $10.
For the high school portion of the Conference, students were invited to prepare a 3-10 page essay analyzing a theme or character from the Harry Potter series or an essay discussing how some elements of the series extend into an academic discipline.
The College will be awarding three, $10,000 scholarships (to be awarded in the amount of $2,500 over the course of four undergraduate semesters). The scholarship is only acceptable at Chestnut Hill College and is contingent upon a student’s application and acceptance to the College.
The 5th Annual Harry Potter Academic Conference on Friday will follow Thursday’s high school session with lectures by two plenary speakers as well as speakers from across the country ready to share their scholarly works.
The College will host two plenary speakers: Loris Vezalli, Ph.D., associate professor at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in Italy, and Anthony Jack Gierzynski, Ph.D., professor at The University of Vermont.
Vezalli will return for a second Harry Potter Academic Conference, this year he agreed to come in person. Vezalli will present “Fighting the Battle against Stigma and Group Segregation with the Magic of Harry Potter.” Vezalli is known for his publication, “The Greatest Magic of Harry Potter: Reducing Prejudice” in The Journal of Applied Social Psychology. His main research interests concern strategies for reduction of prejudice, also trapped at an unconscious level, mostly based on direct and indirect contact between groups.
Gierzynski will speak at his first Harry Potter Academic Conference and will present the lecture “Do Fictional Stories Really make Us More Tolerant and Accepting?” Grierzynski has published four books including “Harry Potter and the Politics of the Muggle Generation,” along with other works on politics, finance and media.
To register for the Harry Potter Conference, and for more information, visit www.harrypotterconference.com or contact Patrick McCauley, Ph.D., associate professor of religious studies and co-coordinator of the Harry Potter Conference, at mccauleyp@chc.edu, or Karen Wendling, associate professor of chemistry and co-coordinator of the Harry Potter Conference at wedlingk@chc.edu.
7th Annual Philadelphia Brotherly Love Cup Quidditch Tournament
The Philadelphia Brotherly Love Cup will return for its seventh year at Chestnut Hill College on Saturday, October 22, at 10 a.m., on the College’s softball field. The event is free and open to the public.
The tournament is a round-robin style tournament that will feature broomsticks, snitches and bludgers, just like in the game made famous by J.K. Rowling.
The Griffins will be joined by Franklin and Marshall College, the University of Pittsburgh, Lafayette College, Kutztown University, Syracuse University, Stockton University, and the Philadelphia Honey Badgers— Philadelphia’s community team.
“What makes this tournament so special is the different schools that come to Philadelphia area to play Quidditch,” says Elena Ramos ’18, Quidditch team captain. “We’ve had Franklin and Marshall College, Lafayette College, and Syracuse attend the Brotherly Love Cup in our past years, so they definitely will not be strangers to the pitch as a few of the other teams will be.”
Muggle Quidditch is a cross between dodgeball, basketball and rugby, and is played internationally. Men and women play on the same team, looking to score the most points, and to catch the golden snitch.
For more information about the Philadelphia Brotherly Love Cup visit www.chc.edu/broomstick or contact Emily Schademan, director of student activities at schademane@chc.edu or 215.753.3684.
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About Chestnut Hill College
Celebrating more than 90 years of tradition, Chestnut Hill College is a four-year, coed Catholic college in the Ignatian tradition that offers a traditional liberal arts undergraduate program as well as accelerated undergraduate degrees, master’s and doctoral programs. The College has been rated by US News & World Report as among the best master’s universities in the North, as among the best Northeastern colleges by The Princeton Review, and has been classified as selective by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Since 1924, the College has offered a rigorous curriculum that provides students with a broad background in the humanities, social
