I've just finished up with one of my favorite weekends of the year, the annual Harry Potter Academic Conference at Chestnut Hill College. This year I hosted a panel called "The Mirror of Rettopyrrah: Wizarding World reflections in post-Potter books."
My contribution was "A Serial Killer's Rebounding Spell: A Deathly Hallows echo in Troubled Blood."Please check it out.
The thematic similarities between the first seven Strike books and the Harry Potter series makes me think it is highly likely that, as reported by UK Sunday Times Arts editor Richard Brooks in February 2014, Rowling initially planned the Strike series as seven books. The Times was, after all, the paper that used forensic literary analysis to document similarities between Cuckoo's Calling and other Rowling works, and it seems unlikely they would publish that claim unless they had reason to believe it was true, although their source of information may have been out of date Galbraith immediately denied that seven books were planned and by July 2014, announced there would be more than seven books, perhaps even an open-ended series. By April 2023, the author had decided the series would be complete at ten. The simplest explanation is, after being outed much sooner than planned, "Galbraith" rethought the series plan. And, as we well know, whether writing as Rowling or Galbraith, this author is selective about how much of the planning process is shared.
So, is there any point in considering the Parallel Series Hypothesis, now that we've hit #8 in the Strike Series? Find out after the jump.
I haven't seen the new movie yet, as my husband and I are re-watching the previous ones first, but I''m looking forward to to seeing it soon, and perhaps reviewing it here.
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I got to appear on one of my favorite podcasts this week: Potterversity! While I've been privileged to be a guest many times over the years, this time was special because I got to revisit my first real fandom: Star Trek and see it through the lens of Harry Potter.
Check out the episode here.
It was a follow-up to an earlier Trek-Potter discussion, found here.
Live long and manage mischief!
If you don't mind a bit of a plug here, I am happy to announce that Potterversity: Essays Exploring the World of Harry Potter, edited by my good friends Katy McDaniel and Emily Strand. is now ready for purchase. I got my author's copy in the mail today, having contributed an essay: "The Weasley Witches: From Snitches to Stitches to Not-My-Daughter-You-Bitches" to the Questions of Character section. It looks great and I can't wait to read the whole thing.
I also recommend Lorrie's book, Snape: The Definitive Analysis of Hogwart's Mysterious Potion Master, which was updated in 2022.
Note: this post is also available on Substack,
One of the many connections The Running Grave has with Troubled Blood is the theme of water. Troubled Blood, of course, centered around the real-life Cornish floods of 2014. A Running Grave has its share of rain, including one real-life storm, but more of its water comes in the form of baptismal imagery, both traditional and macabre. How does this unite both the book and StrikeandRobin into a coherent whole? Find out after the jump.
I'm midway through my favorite two academic days of the year, the annual Chestnut Hill College Harry Potter Academic Conference. The organizers were kind enough to be flexible with the deadlines and let me submit an abstract on The Running Grave. Here is my recorded presentation. Enjoy! Spoilers for TRG.
You can find out more about the history of the conference and see past programs here.
This year's schedule is available here.
Tickets for this year's conference are available here.
In 2020, I spoke on the psychology of humor in the Harry Potter series.
I'm still hard at work on my cratylic names post, which is taking a while, given the number of names in The Running Grave, but I wanted to share a few bits of news that I am excited about. First, although The Running Grave and other Strike posts have understandably dominated here for the last few weeks, I never intended this blog to center exclusively on Strike, or Strike/Harry Potter connections. My first love is young adult literature and, while my scholarship into psychological themes in YA literature was triggered by Harry Potter, my interests spread well beyond that series.
I was delighted to see on Facebook that Veronica Roth's Divergent was the featured weekend pick on Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday page. If you teach YA literature or, like me, simply enjoy reading it, this page is well worth following. For Divergent enthusiasts out there, here are some links to some of my earlier posts on that series, as well as to some talks and podcasts I have done on the topic.
Two key posts on the Divergent Factions and their connections to Five Factor Personality theory. Part I and Part II.
Those posts became my first Hogpro material ever cited in in a scientific conference paper. That research was eventually published in a peer-reviewed journal.
I wrote about a few other Divergent-based topics, too:
The significance of the zip-lining adventure,
The movie screening with the Mary Baldwin psychology department.
Why Allegiant might have worked better with epigenetic rather than genetic experimentation.
Finally, for those interested in Divergent-Harry Potter connections, I will point you to:
My Mugglenet Academia appearance: Tris Transfigured!
And
My Chestnut Hill presentation on Tris Prior and Hermione Granger as twin personalities.
Speaking of the Harry Potter Academic Conference, we are only a week away! It is all online this year and, though I will miss seeing all my favorite Potter buddies in person, it is a great opportunity for anyone to attend, without the expense of travel. For $15, you can get two days of amazing Potter and Rowling scholarship. My own talk, which, I believe, will be the first-ever academic presentation on The Running Grave, is Friday morning.
Are you a Chocolate Frog or Butterbeer fan? If so, tune in to these Potterversity Podcasts, where I was recently privileged to be a guest.
Part One: Pondering Pumpkin Pasties.
Part Two: Considering Cockroach Clusters.
I forgot that May the 2nd was the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts. Below is an image of that fateful day from my 2020 talk at the Chestnut Hill Academic Conference.
My editor, Dr. Lana Whited, posted that the final manuscript was sent off to the publisher today! I am very excited about this volume, for which I contributed a chapter on the psychology of humor in Harry Potter. It is also, to the best of my knowledge, the first academic volume to include essays on some of Rowling's other works, including The Ickabog, A Casual Vacancy and, of course, Cormoran Strike. I'll let everyone know when it's available to order.
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 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.