October has proven a productive month for my scholarship! This month I’ve had two articles (both which were a long time in the making) published in separate peer-reviewed academic journals, I’ve just returned from presenting at an academic conference and I’m beginning work on an essay that will be included in an exciting new scholarly collection. As a (perhaps) not-so-lame excuse for why I’ve been too busy to post new content on this blog, here is a short description of each of these projects and how to access or find out more about them. Thanks for indulging me in a little horn-tooting!
First, my essay “Harry Potter and the Sacramental Principle” is included in the October 2019 edition (volume 93) of the journal Worship, “a peer-reviewed, international ecumenical journal for the study of liturgy and liturgical renewal” (from the Worship website). This journal was founded in 1926 by one of my personal liturgical heroes, Virgil Michel, OSB, who brought to the blossoming liturgical movement its distinctly American contribution: the notion that the liturgy, if consciously and inclusively celebrated, could bring about profound social regeneration. I’ve had long conversations with Virgil Michel in my scholarly imagination, and it was a thrill I will not soon forget to see my name in the pages of the journal he founded.
My essay details how the depiction of magic in Harry Potter rests conceptually on the same notions about reality that undergird the sacramental life of the Church: that God’s abiding presence is shot through the world around us, if we have eyes to see (just like that “hidden in plain sight” quality of the magic in Harry Potter). Pastorally, the essay urges those in ministry to employ this aspect of the series – and its profound influence on rising generations – to help renew a sacramental imagination in our age. Worship is a print-only journal, so check out your local academic library for a copy, or subscribe through their website. (For those more casually interested, I gave a shorter version of that essay to Ohio State’s Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies’ 2017 conference, Popular Culture and the Deep Past, and you can watch that nutshell version here.)
Second, my essay “Dobby the Robot: the Science Fiction in Harry Potter” appears this month in the special Children’s Literature edition of Mythlore, “a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal published by the Mythopoeic Society that focuses on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and the genres of myth and fantasy” (from the Mythlore website).
It is a great honor to be included in this volume, which also features essays by my friends and fellow speculative fiction scholars Katherine Sas and Kris Swank. And the great news for us all is Mythlore is an open-access journal, so you can access the entire contents of this volume right here. Previous issues are also available.
The “Robots” essay makes an argument that the overriding conceptual source informing house-elves, those beloved yet controversial creatures in Harry Potter, is the trope of the created servant (often expressed as robots) in science fiction. You may think I’ve branched a little far from my focus on the religious themes in literature with this essay, but traditionally, robots as a trope of classic science fiction (and, I argue, house-elves in Harry Potter) seldom appear without invoking thorny ethical questions regarding personhood, free will and human dignity – questions too often relegated to religious discourse. (See this previous post for more.) Also, in researching the history of the robot trope, I discovered its Western origins in Jewish legends of man-shaped automata termed Golems, created to demonstrate a particular rabbi’s mystic holiness. So robots have religious origins as well as invoking questions that interest scholars and adherents of religion. I hope you’ll read my sprawling argument that Dobby is really just a robot in disguise and tell me what you think.
Next, on October 18, I presented my thoughts on the Harry Potter books verses their film adaptations at the 8th annual Harry Potter Academic Conference, hosted as always by Chestnut Hill College outside Philadelphia, PA. (My talk was an expanded and reworked version of this blog post from Hogwarts Professor.) It was a lovely, all-too-quick weekend, as usual, with highlights (for me) including Lana Whited’s talk on dragon and Phoenix imagery in The Crimes of Grindelwald, Travis Prinzi’s look at the allusive relationship between Potter and the old movie Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Katy McDaniel (host of the academic Harry Potter podcast Reading Writing Rowling)’s look at fan maps as doors to the sacred imaginative spaces created by stories like Harry Potter. (My unofficial favorite moment of the conference was a pumpkin-ale-fueled incident between Laurie Beckoff and Caitlin Harper after the conference which we are now terming “The Great Ron Row of 2019”. Details are hazy, but it suffices to say some people admire Ron Weasley more than others do.) As usual, I can’t wait to return to Chestnut Hill in 2020.
My work is cut out for me upon returning from Chestnut Hill, as I was delighted this summer to have my proposal accepted for a chapter in The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter, Volume 2, edited by Dr. Lana Whited of Ferrum College and published by University of Missouri Press. My essay will consider the various parenting styles and relationships in Harry Potter from perspectives of both psychology and religious studies. In the end I hope to show that religious metaphor is the interpretive key to unlock the meaning of these relationships and their influence upon the narrative. But more than that I shan’t say until the thing is written! Stay tuned for a publication date in 2020.
Thanks for allowing me to crow a bit – a fitting activity, perhaps, for this spooky month. Thanks especially to those who have supported me in any way – from allowing me to drivel on at parties about my latest project to dialoguing with me to help make my arguments stronger or better supported to sharing your own Potter ideas. 50 points to your House, whatever it may be!