Find out how breaking the rules leads to seeking justice in the wizarding world - and our own. An early critique of the Harry Potter series complained that Harry, Hermione, and Ron often break the rules and don’t always get in trouble for it. In this episode, Katy and Emily talk with Dr. Beth Sutton-Ramspeck about how seeing the limitations of rules and having the courage to break them prepares the series’ characters for political resistance. Beth’s new book, Harry Potter and Resistance...

We gotta get back to Hogwarts in this episode, where we chat about MuggletNet's Ultimate Unofficial Harry Potter Hogwarts Handbook. Katy and Emily are joined by Potterversity producer Laurie Beckoff and Marissa Osman, two of the authors of the latest release in MuggleNet's Unofficial Reference Library. Following a spellbook, character compendium, and bestiary, this book branches out beyond lists to chronicle every known detail about the wizarding world's most famous school, from history to...

Whether it’s love for Hogwarts or love at Hogwarts, this episode will satisfy your wizard school Valentine’s cravings. What theme is more central to the Harry Potter series than love? On this special interactive episode, Emily and Katy open up their podcast to fans and listeners to talk all about love at Hogwarts. Fielding questions and comments from the webinar chat, Emily and Katy consider the various kinds of love relationships at Hogwarts, Harry Potter valentines gone wrong, and love for...

This episode grapples with two omnipresent themes in Harry Potter: death and immortality. Although the series has sometimes been deemed too dark for children, death can happen to anyone at any time, making it not purely an adult theme but something kids should also learn to encounter. Katy and Emily are joined by Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Associate Professor of New Testament and Director of the Doctor of Ministry program at Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, and co-host of The Two Cities...

For the second part of our discussion about the 2022 Harry Potter Academic Conference, we discuss current themes in Potter scholarship, including the special section on the transgender community. Katy and Emily continue their conversation with conference presenters and attendees Laurie Beckoff, Lauren Camacci, Louise Freeman, and Lana Whited. After talking about favorite presentations in the first half, we turn to overall themes we noticed throughout the conference. Lana sees difference and...

Join us as we reflect on one of our favorite annual events, the 2022 Harry Potter Academic Conference at Chestnut Hill College. Katy and Emily talk with attendees and presenters from the 11th annual HPAC: Laurie Beckoff, Lauren Camacci, Louise Freeman, and Lana Whited. The conference was held entirely in person until 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic necessitated moving the conference online. In 2021, the organizers decided to try a hybrid approach, which continued this year. We discuss the...

It’s the holiday season, so it’s time for the magic of food on this month’s episode. Food has a special role at this time of year . . . and in the Harry Potter series. Katy, Emily, and Louise Freeman talk about the food of the wizarding world: pumpkin pasties, cockroach clusters, butterbeer, cauldron cakes, and all things wizard food. We look at how food operates as a metaphor and how it develops mood and setting in the series. In the Harry Potter books, food serves important purposes in...

For all its growth into a global media franchise, Harry Potter is first and foremost a work of literature. Katy and Emily talk to Dr. Cecilia Konchar Farr, Professor of English and Dean of the College of Liberal and Creative Arts at West Liberty University and editor of the recent anthology Open at the Close: Literary Essays on Harry Potter. For all the scholarship the series has generated, many of the literary qualities of the books are frequently overlooked while attention is instead paid...

Explore the whimsical, fantastical, compelling images in Jim Kay’s illustrated Harry Potter editions. On this episode, Katy and Emily talk with artist and fantasy scholar Emily Austin (Signum University) and literary scholar Beatrice Groves (Trinity College, Oxford) about the rich, marvelous world depicted in Jim Kay’s gorgeous illustrations of the Potterverse. Looking at Books 1–4, we dissect Kay’s style and the range of his artistry and also decode some of the symbolic language in his...

Discover how politics can be both Dark Arts and the defense against them in Harry Potter. Katy and Emily talk to Dr. John S. Nelson, Professor of Political Theory and Communication at the University of Iowa and author of Defenses Against the Dark Arts: The Political Education of Harry Potter and His Friends, published by Lexington Books in 2021, about the politics of the series. John feels that the Harry Potter books “hit you over the head” with the interest in politics exhibited by Harry...

Discover the transfiguring effects of reading the Harry Potter series on this month’s episode. Emily and Katy talk with Dr. Anne Mamary (Monmouth College) about her anthology The Alchemical Harry Potter: Essays on Transfiguration in J.K. Rowling’s Novels (McFarland 2021). We talk about the power of the Potter books and films, and how they not only express alchemical themes but also work a kind of alchemical magic on readers and viewers. Anne explains that alchemy is a way to transform not...

Wrock out on this episode about musical fan creations in the Potterverse. We are all about fan culture in this month’s episode. Emily and Katy talk with Paul Thomas (University of Kansas) about his book I Wanna Wrock!: The World of Harry Potter-Inspired “Wizard Rock” and Its Fandom (McFarland 2019). Paul is himself a wrock musician in the band the 8th Horcrux. He first got involved in wrock as a way to impress his crush, who is now his wife and fellow bandmember, Trina. As a result, he’s...

Eavesdrop on the Potterversity faculty in the staff lounge as we dish about Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore! NOTE: This episode contains spoilers! On this special episode, hear uncensored opinions and on-the-spot analysis about The Secrets of Dumbledore from some of our Potterversity regulars, Beatrice Groves, Emma Nicholson, Louise Freeman, and Lana Whited. We’ve pulled together outtakes from our technically off-the-record conversations for your listening pleasure. Some...

Join us for our deep dive into Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore and its literary allusions, beastly lore, and continuation of the plot points in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. NOTE: This episode contains spoilers! Dr. Beatrice Groves (Trinity College, Oxford) joins Katy and Emily to decode the symbolic elements of this story and help us understand where it fits within the Harry Potter series. Find out about Bea’s prediction-come-true and hear about how the central...

David Martin, one of the winners of Harry Potter: Hogwarts Tournament of Houses, talks about his amazing experience on the show. On this episode, Katy and Emily talk with our friend David Martin about being on the victorious Hufflepuff team on the Tournament of Houses quiz show, which aired on TBS November to December 2021. He tells us how the auditions went, what it was like to be on the show, which questions most stumped him, what it’s like to have become a social media star, and why he...

Understand the ties that bind – blood and otherwise – in Arthurian legend and the wizarding world in this episode. Emily and Katy discuss with Dr. Carol Jamison (Georgia Southern University) the links between Arthurian literature and Harry Potter through the concepts of blood lines, noble (or “pure”) blood, and blood feud. Author of Chivalry in Westeros(McFarland, 2018), Carol examines medievalism in popular culture, not only in the Potterverse but also Game of Thrones. She explains both...

Take a closer look at the Harry Potter fandom in this month's episode! What aspects of the fandom are your favorites: festivals, online communities, cosplay, fan fiction, or something else? On this episode, Emily and Katy talk with Dr. Marianne Martens (Kent State University), author of The Forever Fandom of Harry Potter (Cambridge University Press), about what makes Harry Potter fan communities unique and persistent. The first Harry Potter book was published at about the same time...

We at Potterversity love house-elves! Join us for our valentine to Dobby, Winky, Kreacher, and Hokey and their persistent relevance for understanding injustice. House-elf fans Emily and Katy talk with Dr. Christine Schott (Erskine College) about how the house-elves keep Harry Potter relevant to social issues today. Given the upheaval this new generation of readers sees in our world, Christine tells us, the Harry Potter stories give us a "training ground" for figuring out how to respond to...

Looking to recover lost love? Discover the connections between the Harry Potter stories and The Christmas Pig.  Designed for younger readers, The Christmas Pig features a young boy going on a perilous quest to thwart a materialist villain, The Loser, and reclaim his lost, beloved best friend, Dur Pig (DP). In this first episode of the new year, Emily and Katy explore the similarities between The Christmas Pig and the Harry Potter novels. Common motifs include the value of courage and...

Tune in for the latest Potter Studies insights from the tenth annual Harry Potter Academic Conference! In this special episode, Emily and Katy have an in-person roundtable with Laurie Beckoff, Kat Miller (Alohomora!), and Kat Sas about some of the exciting ideas and controversial issues raised over the course of October's Harry Potter Academic Conference (HPAC) at Chestnut Hill College. Fresh from the conference, we talk about media and social media "mirrors" in the wizarding world,...

Get a little "meta" in this episode about Harry Potter fandom and pop culture podcasting!  Emily and Katy talk with film and fandom scholar - and fellow podcaster - Michael Boyce, Professor of English Literature and Film Studies at Booth University College and host of the Geek 4 podcast. We investigate how the Harry Potter films have affected our fandom and explore podcasting about popular culture from within the "ivory tower" of academia. Were you first attracted to the Harry Potter...

Investigate bullying at Hogwarts on this month’s episode. In this episode, Emily and Katy talk with Ithaca College’s Katharine Kittredge and Carolyn Rennie about the history of bullying and how it relates to the social and educational environment at Hogwarts. We talk about what makes a bully and how that conception has perhaps changed over time in the western world. Katharine explains how eighteenth-century writers tended to think of bullying as natural to children and inevitable in the...

Decode magical numbers on this month's episode! Katy and Emily talk with Dr. Lana Whited (Ferrum College) about one of the more mysterious of the magical subjects at Hogwarts: Arithmancy. We discuss where this subject fits in the Hogwarts core curriculum, its historical and etymological roots, and its meaning within the Harry Potter series. And, for that matter, how do you even pronounce it? Arithmancy is a type of divination using numbers used to predict events in the ancient world. Lana...

Harry’s explorations of loss, grief, and the nature of death borrow heavily from classical visions of the underworld, especially Virgil's Aeneid. In this episode, Katy and Emily talk to Dr. Vassiliki (Lily) Panoussi, Chancellor Professor of Classical Studies at William and Mary, about references in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to Virgil's Aeneid. Lily tells us about this ancient Roman origin story, which also references classical Greek texts like The Iliad and The Odyssey. It...

On this episode, we're reading Harry Potter through trauma theory, Fat Studies, and semiotics - and from the perspective of a nonbinary trans scholar of young adult literature. What does it meant to be a Potter scholar? Get a glimpse of one academic's research into a variety of topics in the Harry Potter books. In this episode, Emily and Katy talk with Tolonda Henderson, former librarian and current scholar of the intersections of disability, race, and adolescence in young adult...