Students in Associate Professor of Sociology Lori Brown’s Principles of Sociology class will be joining millions of other Harry Potter fans in reading the series’ final installment once it is published on July 21.

Brown’s students have an added incentive for reading the book because they’ll also be completing an academic assignment.

Over the summer, Brown sends each of the nearly 50 students in her SOC 230 class a letter that announces this unusual requirement of reading at least two books in the Harry Potter series.

Brown’s letter, designed to be similar to the letter Harry Potter received in the first book, prepares students for this introductory sociology course that she has given the alternate title of “Muggle vs. The Wizarding World—Examining Sociological Ideas in the Stories of Harry Potter.”

The class still covers all the subject matter of an introductory sociology class, but puts much of the material in the context of Harry Potter's world.

“[Author J.K. Rowling has] created another world that has some of the same problems we do,” Brown explained. “It's not so hard to talk about issues of race when it's talked about in muggles and mudbloods.”

Of course, reading Harry Potter isn’t the only class assignment. Students also read their sociology textbook, participate in class discussion, post on the course’s online discussion board and watch each of the Harry Potter films.

Brown first taught sociology with this Harry Potter twist in 2005.

“The class is based on Harry Potter but it is a sociology class so you still get very important information,” said Brittany Allred, who was a member of that first class. “You can use that information to understand how society works [and] why things are the way they are.”