The Harry Potter Generation

The generation of readers most heavily impacted by J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series--those who grew up alongside "the boy who lived"--have come of age. They are poised to become teachers, parents, critics and writers, and many of their views and choices will be influenced by the literary revolution in which they were immersed. This collection of new essays explores the many different ways in which Harry Potter has shaped this generation's views on everything from politics to identity to pedagogical spaces online. It seeks to determine how the books have affected fans' understanding of their place in the world and their capacity to create it anew.

Harry Potter and the Millennials tells the fascinating story of how the team designed the study and gathered results, explains what conclusions can and cannot be drawn, and reveals the challenges social scientists face in studying political science, sociology, and mass communication. Specifically, the evidence indicates that Harry Potter fans are more open to diversity and are more politically tolerant than nonfans; fans are also less authoritarian, less likely to support the use of deadly force or torture, more politically active, and more likely to have had a negative view of the Bush administration. Furthermore, these differences do not disappear when controlling for other important predictors of these perspectives, lending support to the argument that the series indeed had an independent effect on its audience. In this clear and cogent account, Gierzynski demonstrates how social scientists develop and design research questions and studies.

A collection of student essays that captures the passionate engagement their generation brings to the Harry Potter phenomenon. A Wizard of Their Age began when the students in Cecilia Konchar Farr’s “Six Degrees of Harry Potter” course at St. Catherine University kept finding errors in the available scholarship. These students had been reading Harry Potter for their entire literate lives, and they demanded more attention to the details they found significant. “We can do better than this,” they said. Konchar Farr, two undergraduate teaching assistants, and five student editors decided to test that hypothesis. After issuing a call for contributions, they selected fifteen thoughtful academic essays by students from across the country. These essays examine the Harry Potter books from a variety of perspectives, including literary, historical, cultural, gender, mythological, psychological, theological, and genetic—there is even a nursing care plan for Tom Riddle. Interspersed among the essays are brief vignettes entitled “My Harry Potter Story,” where students write about their personal encounters with the novels. Although a quick Internet search yields a dazzling number of books about Harry Potter, few are as deeply invested or insightful as A Wizard of Their Age. Written and edited by—and for—members of the Harry Potter generation, these essays demonstrate this generation’s passionate engagement with the Harry Potter phenomenon and provide numerous critical insights into the individual novels and the series as a whole. Cecilia Konchar Farr is Professor of English and Women’s Studies at St. Catherine University. She is the author of Reading Oprah: How Oprah’s Book Club Changed the Way America Reads and the coeditor (with Jaime Harker) of The Oprah Affect: Critical Essays on Oprah’s Book Club, both published by SUNY Press.

A collection of student essays that captures the passionate engagement their generation brings to the Harry Potter phenomenon. A Wizard of Their Age began when the students in Cecilia Konchar Farr’s “Six Degrees of Harry Potter” course at St. Catherine University kept finding errors in the available scholarship. These students had been reading Harry Potter for their entire literate lives, and they demanded more attention to the details they found significant. “We can do better than this,” they said. Konchar Farr, two undergraduate teaching assistants, and five student editors decided to test that hypothesis. After issuing a call for contributions, they selected fifteen thoughtful academic essays by students from across the country. These essays examine the Harry Potter books from a variety of perspectives, including literary, historical, cultural, gender, mythological, psychological, theological, and genetic—there is even a nursing care plan for Tom Riddle. Interspersed among the essays are brief vignettes entitled “My Harry Potter Story,” where students write about their personal encounters with the novels. Although a quick Internet search yields a dazzling number of books about Harry Potter, few are as deeply invested or insightful as A Wizard of Their Age. Written and edited by—and for—members of the Harry Potter generation, these essays demonstrate this generation’s passionate engagement with the Harry Potter phenomenon and provide numerous critical insights into the individual novels and the series as a whole.

J. K. Rowling achieved astounding commercial success with her series of novels about Harry Potter, the boy-wizard who finds out about his magical powers on the morning of his eleventh birthday. The books' incredible popularity, and the subsequent likelihood that they are among this generation's most formative narratives, call for critical exploration and study to interpret the works' inherent tropes and themes. The essays in this collection assume that Rowling's works should not be relegated to the categories of pulp fiction or children's trends, which would deny their certain influence on the intellectual, emotional, and psychosocial development of today's children. The variety of contributions allows for a range of approaches and interpretive methods in exploring the novels, and reveals the deeper meanings and attitudes towards justice, education, race, foreign cultures, socioeconomic class, and gender. Following an introductory discussion of the Harry Potter phenomenon are essays considering the psychological and social-developmental experiences of children as mirrored in Rowling's novels. Next, the works' literary and historical contexts are examined, including the European fairy tale tradition, the British abolitionist movement, and the public-school story genre. A third section focuses on the social values underlying the Potter series and on issues such as morality, the rule of law, and constructions of bravery.

Nineteen years later . . . Even as a new generation embraces the Harry Potter novels for the first time, J.K. Rowling's wizarding world continues to expand. Rowling herself has created a five-film spinoff, a two-part stage play, and an immersive online universe. The fictional sport of Quidditch now has a real-world counterpart, complete with an international governing body and a major league. Fans have adapted the series into role-playing games, crossover parodies, musicals, films, dances, art, and real, published fiction. There are new mobile games, toys, theme parks--even a complete line of Harry Potter-inspired home décor from Pottery Barn. More than ten years have passed since the end of the series, and Potterheads still can't get enough. In this addition to Intellect's Fan Phenomena series, enthusiasts and scholars explore the culture of the fandom, its evolution, and how it managed to turn a boy wizard into the international icon we see splashed across lunchboxes, printed on t-shirts, and enshrined in tattoos. Harry Potter: Fan Phenomena is a journey--yes, a magical one--through one of the largest fanbases of all time and their efforts to ensure that The Boy Who Lived would live forever.

The impact of public narratives has been so broad (including effects on beliefs and behavior but extending beyond to emotion and personality), that the stakeholders in the process have been located across disciplines, institutions, governments, and, indeed, across epochs. Narrative Impact draws upon scholars in diverse branches of psychology and media research to explore the subjective experience of public narratives, the affordances of the narrative environment, and the roles played by narratives in both personal and collective spheres. The book brings together current theory and research presented primarily from an empirical psychological and communications perspective, as well as contributions from literary theory, sociology, and censorship studies. To be commensurate with the broad scope of influence of public narratives, the book includes the narrative mobilization of major social movements, the formation of self-concepts in young people, banning of texts in schools, the constraining impact of narratives on jurors in the court room, and the wide use of education entertainment to affect social changes. Taken together, the interdisciplinary nature of the book and its stellar list of contributors set it apart from many edited volumes. Narrative Impact will draw readership from various fields, including sociology, literary studies, and curriculum policy. Providing new explanatory concepts, this book: *is the first account on the psychology of narrative persuasion and brings together the relevant conceptualizations from within various sectors of psychology together with the major issues that concern cognate disciplines outside of psychology; *focuses on understanding the mechanisms that underlie the power of public narratives to achieve broad historical and social changes; *offers breakthroughs to the future: the role of "presence" in virtual reality narratives; the role of "zines" in females' fashioning of their selves; and the central role of imagery in transportation into narrative worlds; *explains varying roles of emotion in narrative immersion; and *addresses the growing blurring of fact and fiction: mechanisms and implications for beliefs and behavior.