Now that my semester is over, I'm hoping to have a bit more reading time. Next on my list is a new academic volume from Dr. Beth Sutton-Ramspeck, Professor Emerita of English at the Ohio State University at Lima. I've enjoyed Dr. Sutton-Ramspeck's presentations at the Harry Potter Academic Conference at Chestnut Hill College for years, and I am excited to read a complete volume of her work. She was kind enough to answer a few questions about the book. What gave you the idea for this book? How long did it take you to write it?
It came to me gradually, not all at once.I started way back in 2010 with a paper for a conference about creativity. In the process of a word search, I discovered that “create” is used by Voldemort and other rule breakers, and “invent” is used especially to describe what the “Half-blood Prince” is doing in his potions book. The following year, I wrote a paper about the Imperius Curse, which is, of course, unforgivable, but Harry uses it. So that’s another case of rule breaking.
Then I started writing more Harry Potter papers, and they were also in various ways about rule breaking, though at first I didn’t quite make the connection—until I did, and decided that, hey, maybe I could write a book about rule-breaking in Harry Potter. I’m not precisely certain when a series of papers turned into a book idea, to tell you the truth.
Some time after the 2016 election, when people (like me) opposed to Trump policies were called “the resistance,” it suddenly hit me that “resistance” is what I’d been doing all along, and it was only then that I started doing research about resistance as a phenomenon. When I submitted the book for publication, the working title was Mischief Managed: Rule Breaking as Resistance in the Harry Potter Books, but Routledge preferred Harry Potter and Resistance, and who was I to argue? The new title led to my foregrounding resistance over rule-breaking, though it was more a matter of emphasis, since I had completed the vast bulk of my analysis and arguments.
Where did you get the awesome cover picture?
Routledge sent me to Getty Images to look for cover ideas, and that’s where I found the cover picture, after using what seemed like a hundred search terms. This one came up with “Griffin.” The gargoyle image is actually from Viet Nam, which I find interesting.
J.K Rowling obviously has many supportive fans, but there are also many who have enjoyed her fiction for years but who are not in agreement with her views on gender identity. Do you think that matters as far as readers relating to your book?
I certainly hope not, though I suppose for some it will—or rather, they won’t read my book to begin with. I was nearly done writing it when the gender controversies first arose, and it was too late to do much to alter my plans. I mention it in my preface and in a few places here and there in the body of the book, but the core arguments are based on the texts of the books themselves.
I think that for the most part the books convey messages of tolerance, which is, of course, why so many have been disappointed by the ways the author seems to express intolerance in her recent comments. I hope fans of the books will be open to reading and evaluating my arguments, which are based on close analysis of the books themselves in the context of a variety of interdisciplinary fields.
The book is on sale this month at a discount from the publisher. You can also hear Dr. Sutton-Ramspeck talk more about the book on a recent Potterversity podcast.
