This thoroughly revised edition includes updated essays on cultural themes and literary analysis, and its new essays analyze the full scope of the seven-book series as both pop cultural phenomenon and as a set of literary texts. Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter, Second Edition draws on a wider range of intellectual traditions to explore the texts, including moral-theological analysis, psychoanalytic perspectives, and philosophy of technology. The Harry Potter novels engage the social, cultural, and psychological preoccupations of our times, and Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter, Second Edition examines these worlds of consciousness and culture, ultimately revealing how modern anxieties and fixations are reflected in these powerful texts.
("DISCLAIMER: This book is not authorized, approved, licensed, or endorsed by J.K. Rowling, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., or anyone associated with the Harry Potter books or movies.")
Introduction: Fostering Insight through Multiple Critical Perspectives, Elizabeth E. Heilman
I. Perspectives on Identity and Morality
1. Controversial Content: Is Harry Potter Harmful to Children?, Deborah J. Taub and Heather L. Servaty-Seib
2. Harry Potter and Christian Theology, Peter Ciaccio
3. Harry Potter's World as a Morality Tale of Technology and Media, Nicholas Sheltrown
4. Is Desire Beneficial Or Harmful in the Harry Potter Series?, Taija Piippo
5. The Great Snape Debate, Peter Appelbaum
II. Critical and Sociological Perspectives
6. Schooling Harry Potter: Teachers and Learning, Power and Knowledge, Megan L. Birch
7. Comedy, Quest, and Community: Home and Family in Harry Potter, John Kornfeld and Laurie Prothro
8. From Sexist to (sort-of) Feminist: Representations of Gender in the Harry Potter Series, Elizabeth E. Heilman and Trevor Donaldson
9. Monsters, Creatures, and Pets at Hogwarts: Animal Stewardship in the World of Harry Potter, Peter Dendle
10. Harry Potter, the War against Evil, and the Melodramatization of Public Culture, Marc Bousquet
III. Literacy Elements and Interpretations
11. Playing the Genre Game: Generic Fusions of the Harry Potter Series, Anne Hiebert Alton
12. Harry Potter and the Secrets of Children’s Literature, Maria Nikolajeva
13. Harry Potter and the Horrors of the Oresteia, Alice Mills
14. Philosopher’s Stone to Resurrection Stone: Narrative Transformations and Intersecting Cultures across the Harry Potter Series, Kate Behr
IV. Cultural Studies and Media Perspectives
15. Lost in Translation?: Harry Potter, from Page to Screen, Philip Nel
16. The Migration of Media: Harry Potter in Print and Pixels, Anna Gunder
17. Writing Harry's World: Children Co-Authoring Hogwarts, Ernest L. Bond and Nancy L. Michelson
18. Pottermania: Good, Clean Fun or Cultural Hegemony?, Tammy Turner-Vorbeck
Biography
Elizabeth E. Heilman is Associate Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University.
