Wizards vs. Muggles

Harry Potter has given the study of popular culture a unique platform for exploring the nature of human identity. “Potter Studies” is developing into a vibrant interdisciplinary field of scholarship.
This collection of new essays examines issues surrounding race, class, gender, sexual orientation and personal virtue, both in the wizarding world and in our own. The contributors discuss an array of meanings and contexts in the Harry Potter universe relating to identity issues, and the ways in which these manifest in fandom cultures and real-world schools and businesses.

Christopher E. Bell is an associate professor of media studies in the department of communication at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, specializing in the study of the ways in which race, class and gender intersect in different forms of children’s media. He is a TED speaker, a diversity and inclusiveness consultant for Pixar Animation Studios, a 2017 David Letterman Award winning media scholar and the 2017 Denver Comic Con Popular Culture Educator of the Year.

Edited by Christopher E. Bell

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 244
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2016
pISBN: 978-0-7864-9930-4
eISBN: 978-1-4766-2329-0
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments vi
Introduction   (Christopher E. Bell) 1

Transfiguration: Wizard Identity: “The ­anti-racist-white-hero premise”: Whiteness and the Harry Potter Series (Raymond I. Schuck) 9
The Prisoner of Gender: Masculinity in the Potter Books (Lauren R. Camacci) 27
The HIV Metaphor: J.K. Rowling’s Werewolf and Its Transformative Potential (Brendan G.A. Hughes) 49
Heroes and Horcruxes: Dumbledore’s Army as Metonym (Christopher E. Bell) 72
“I’m a wizard too!” Identification and Habitus (Hillary A. Jones) 89
Gendered Heroism: Family Romance and Transformations of the ­Hero-Type (Shira Wolosky) 110
Muggle Studies: Muggle Identity: Quenching the Quill: How Fan Art Builds Meaning, Creates Bonds and Triggers Imagination (Jelena Borojević) 133
Transcending Hogwarts: Pedagogical Practices Engendering Discourses of Aggression and Bullying (Kristen L. Cole) 149
Culpability for Curses in Jewish Law and Mystical Lore (Levi Cooper) 168
Building Harry Potter’s Identity in Transmedia Contexts (Pilar Lacasa, Sara Cortés and Rut Martínez-Borda) 194
Creating Equality Through Quidditch: A Rhetorical Analysis of Quidditch Blogs (Ryan S. Rigda) 217

About the Contributors 233
Index 235

• “Wizards vs. Muggles adds to this rapidly emerging field…and adds to it admirably. Nearly every essay is a high quality, well-researched, and well-edited contribution to our understanding of identity construction inside and outside the Potter universe”—Mythlore