Harry Potter Lecture: July 12th at 11:00 AM

I am quite delighted to have the honor of delivering a presentation on Harry Potter on July 12, 2009 at my church, three days before Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is released in theaters. The topic of the lecture (as it will be in a church) is "The Christian Elements of Harry Potter." I expect a decent-sized crowd will be there, as my town was the 9th Harry-est town in America (according to amazon.com), and I'm sure many of the churchgoers have read all of the books. (I have forewarned through the bulletins, etc. that there will be spoilers for those who haven't read the whole series).

I have prepared my notes that draw from my own thoughts and also what I've studied from various HP analysis books on the subject. Hopefully this will get some of the people who attend to read these wonderful works, and maybe even get the local library to stop stocking the companion guidebooks/encyclopedias of the series and turn to books that focus on academic analysis. One can only hope!

I've prepared this presentation for about a month, as it is not the easiest thing to explain the Christianity of a 4000+ page book series in an hour, but it is possible. I have the utmost respect for people like John Granger who manage to speak about alchemy, Christianity, the five keys to Potter and eyeballs in about an hour and a half (as I heard his last talk up in Forks at the Twilight conference? was).

I'm working some more on his some new essays and the continuation of my essay on the music of the Potter films (which I'm holding off on until I hear the score to Half-Blood Prince), so I hope to post on that soon. At any rate, I hope all is well!

Sorry! An update post :)

Hey guys, I know I haven't updated in quite a while - I've just been busy job searching, etc., while doing my part-time work. (Isn't half the world doing that with the economy as such?) Anyway, with hard times come good friends (at least you know the friends you can count on), and the Harry Potter community is sticking together.

We're about two weeks away from the release of the sixth film, and I'll be giving a lecture titled "The Christian Elements of Harry Potter" at my church three days before the release of the film. Hopefully it'll persuade some more people to get on board with some of the work that some of our favorite scholars (Granger, etc.) have been doing for years.

I should be posting a new essay soon; or at least the first part, on the music of the Harry Potter films in time for the new movie. I hope you all enjoy it! :)

A Meet-Up with John Granger!

This past Saturday, February 21st, I had the opportunity to meet (for the second time) John Granger and discuss the Harry Potter books. The HP discussion was hosted by Potterdelphia, a group of which I am now a member. They had a general Potterdelphia meeting the following day, but I fell ill overnight and so could not attend. There were only five people in attendance, but this didn't depress John; he gave a wonderful lecture called "The Eyes of Deathly Hallows" in which he explained that the last Harry Potter installment was all about eyeballs. (Really all about the logos, and to understand that you should really read his book, The Deathly Hallows Lectures in which this particular lecture is a chapter).

We also got to hear his interesting story of how his first Potter-analysis book was published, and some other experiences in the Potter-world he'd had over the years. When I asked him if he'd read logospilgrim's bring forth the best robes (lower-case letters are intended here), he stated that he knew logospilgrim, herself. This was a delight to me, as I loved that small work. And I also asked him what he thought about Nancy S. Villacruz's new book, Does Harry Potter Tickle Sleeping Dragons? I told John that I thought her book was intriguing, but entirely too arrogant in either disregarding or merely waving away other Potter analysis books. Villacruz then says that her book is unique (you can find this phrase firstly on the dust jacked back flap). But she hasn't quite proved this, because she hasn't compared herself to any of the other books (ex. Granger's, Prinzi's, Thomas', Neal's, Heilman's, etc.). Please don't take this as a message not to read her book. No, no. Not at all. To me, all Potter-analysis is intriguing. Just as a person holding a BA in History, I know that in any analysis, while we are supposed to rely on primary sources (in this case, Harry Potter canon and all the other canon pieces that Villacruz mentions in a nice three-way definition - props to her here), we are supposed to acknowledge secondary sources. And if we don't agree with them, we are supposed to take them on and contest their points. Anyway, I think John Granger found my analysis of her book interesting.

I can't wait for John Granger's new book, Harry Potter's Bookshelf, to become available this summer, and apparently he speaks in Princeton, NJ next month. I wish I could be there! It was, as a whole, a delightful early afternoon in Philadelphia.

As a side note, I had a long discussion with Skott of Potterdelphia after John had left. We spoke on a whole bunch of Potter topics including Nurmengard (of which I hope to post an essay shortly) and the splitting of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (questioning where the split would occur).