When Harry Chose Hogwarts: The Effects of Choice and Child Agency on the Mythical Hero Journey

Undergraduate senior honors thesis. Completed December 2011. 46 pages. To view or download, click the link below:

When Harry Chose Hogwarts: The Effects of Choice and Child Agency on the Mythical Hero Journey

By Faith Cotter

Excerpt:

Bruno Bettelheim, author of The Uses of Enchantment, argued that fantasy is the child reader’s way to make sense of their own worlds and emotions. Such stories are the epoch of the realizations of their existence. In turn, then, the role of myth serves to represent the suppressed fears, wants and desires of grown children. It attempts to capture all the wishes of the adult human psyche that were left unspoken: “Who and where are his ogres?” Joseph Campbell wrote in his opus The Hero With A Thousand Faces, a collection and critique of the hero myth as it has appeared over the course of several millenia. “The whole sense of the ubiquitous myth of the hero’s passage is that it shall serve as a general pattern for men and women, wherever they may stand along the scale.” (Campbell 101) The creating of myth is also a means of reconciliation with the secrets of the cosmos. As Campbell wrote, “Myth is the revelation of a plenum of existence within and around every atom of existence. Myth is a directing of the mind and the heart, by means of profoundly informed figurations, to that ultimate mystery which fills and surrounds all existences.” (Campbell 228)

Obituary: Steve Palumbo / Gave everything he had to work, play, family life

Publication: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Publication Date: December 10, 2011

Steve Palumbo was “a young kid with a head full of hair” holding down a job with Pittsburgh’s City Information Systems, said friend and colleague Steve Schmitt, when he first met Mr. Palumbo 17 years ago. At the time, Mr. Schmitt was the director of the department.

“Everything he did in his life was 100 miles per hour. He was a workaholic, he was an early riser, he was the first guy in the office in the morning,” Mr. Schmitt said. “He was one of my best friends.”

Bring Out Your Dead

By Faith Cotter

Publication: The Pioneer Magazine

Publication Date: December 6, 2011

Click here for the article as it appeared in print and here for the Web copy of the story.

Emil Lavdar and Malverse Gilliam may not have had any visitors for a while.

Similar to so many others buried beneath the terrain of Paris Cemetery in Washington Country, Pa., their lives were brought to a close decades ago, and the death dates on several neighboring plots throughout the graveyard indicate that more than a century has elapsed.

Transgender people seek workplace fairness

By Faith Cotter

Publication: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Publication Date: November 16, 2011

Since he arrived in the Pittsburgh area, Rayden Sorock has worked an array of jobs — at coffee shops, on farms, at a building supply reuse center and at a pre-school.

But it wasn’t until he took a 10-month paid fellowship with the relatively new Initiative for Transgender Leadership in Pittsburgh that Mr. Sorock, 25, of Lawrenceville, said he really felt comfortable coming out as himself — a transgender man — in the workplace.

Three local friends, Madeleine Hershey, Jen Saffron and R.T. Peck formed the initiative in 2009, with the goal of breaking down career barriers that exist for transgender people by promoting the leadership and professional development of transgender youth in Pittsburgh.

Going through grief while growing up: high school age children dealing with death handle process better than younger peers

By Faith Cotter

Publication: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, featured as one of the stories on the cover of the Magazine and Health section

Publication Date: November 7, 2011

Click here for the article as it appeared in print.

Mandy Karcher was 7 back in 2001 when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and was told that she had six months to live. No one told Mandy.

Mrs. Karcher fought the disease for eight years. In that time, Mandy grew up. She said she learned about cancer in school and gradually figured out her mother’s condition, but the daughter and her mother never talked about the seriousness of the illness.

What (black) women want: Local network serves ladies of color nationwide

By Faith Cotter

Publication: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Click here for the article as it appeared in print.

Publication Date: October 27, 2011

Ola Jackson, founder and CEO of the Onyx Woman Network, was recently told that she has her hand on the pulse of what black women need to hear.

The Pioneer Magazine, Fall 2011 Issue

For the Fall 2011 edition of The Pioneer magazine, I acted as editor-in-chief. The article I wrote, “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” appears on page 10. Click here to view or download “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” or click here to view or download the entire magazine as it appeared in print. (Note: The headline font for “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” did not transfer to the master version of the PDF. See the individually scanned article for the proper headline font as seen in the printed edition of the magazine.)

Publication Date: October 25, 2011

I Wanna Hold Your Hand

By Faith Cotter

The University of Pittsburgh’s Rainbow Alliance ran out of fliers to pass out to all the students who attended the first meeting of the semester in the Kurtzman Room of the William Pitt Student Union.

The alliance expected 100 students. Nearly 200 attended.