Headology

Headology is the subject of learning about and interpreting people rather than books on magical theory. Although for a subject all about people it still involves an awful lot of background reading. Having risen to prominence over the past few decades, the artful skill of Headology has actually been practiced for centuries - most successfully by witches and wizards who have survived in the inhospitable and dangerously suspicious world outside by knowing when the crowd with pitchforks is going to come at you and how to avoid it. The magical angle on this however has given graduates of this department the edge in meeting new people, being accepted by them and generally making a good impression. Of course there’s more to it than that but there always is.

Anthropology

The subject of cultures and peoples, traditions and conflict resolution. This course is taught by Professor Arabella MacMillan, head of Mandrake House, and is largely taught through her accounts of her travels in the wilds of the world. Her focus, at least in the first year, is mostly on acute observation of the existent situation and adoption of subtle characteristics of the local people in order for them to better empathise with you. This usually involves adopting mannerisms, costume and adopting their accents. There are also tutorials on picking up key words of the language, basic diplomacy techniques and how to read a person's behaviour and tone. Later techniques teach you stronger magical methods for ingratiating yourself with a new group of people such as making yourself look similar to one of them or giving yourself a magical air of calming confidence or authority and an almost supernatural ability to predict how a person is going to react to a given situation. Many graduates of this department go on to be famed diplomats, ambassadors negotiating between different lands or explorers making contact with new civilizations and peoples for the first time.

Performance

Both the art of acting convincingly and lying. Although ostensibly a course for those who wish to further their career in the performing arts (where magicians can make quite a splash considering the level of special effects they can usually muster) it is just as often taken by those who wish to learn how to pretend to be someone else convincingly off the stage as well. It also comes in handy when attempting to persuade someone of your point of view.

The course is run by Dame Tabitha Blake, who before embarking upon her teaching career was a famous star of the stage touring around many of the kingdoms of the known world - such were her talents in demand. Rumours that she acted as a spy for various agencies under cover of her acting career are generally dismissed as being nonsense and poppycock - until you see just how convincing Dame Blake can be when she’s pretending to be one of the first year students during their first lesson.

Linguistics

The art and study of languages. This isn’t just learning new languages but has a wider scope of learning how languages are formed and their basic structure. This makes learning and picking up new languages far easier as its often faster to learn when you already know the basic principles. There is also an portion of the course that concerns the learning of ancient languages which has helped numerous archaeologists over the years. One of the most interesting aspects of the course however is the study of magical language - that words have power and that power can be put into words. Creation and use of these magical languages is not covered until the third year however the first year does cover basic use of words already written in the magical language and identification of potentially dangerous sentences.

The course is run by Dr. Silas Kohara who has been known to leave notes around his classroom that leave the unwary reader with green skin or webbed fingers for days. After his first year classes can demonstrate a good grasp of the linguistic basics (and assuming no one has turned green for at least a month) his first year lessons not only involve practical detection and decoding of magical traps but also demonstrate the best way to read enchanted stories such that the magical words literally leap off the page and how to read magical words without activating them.

uni/headology.txt · Last modified: 2011/02/09 16:43 by jamesi
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