Potterversity: A Potter Studies Podcast

Why is it important to read Harry Potter critically?  Katy and Emily talk about bridging the academic and fan worlds with Dr. Julian Wamble, who teaches a course called Harry Potter and Social Identity at George Washington University. Julian's class allows students to approach complex political issues through the lens of Harry Potter , such as prison abolition based on Sirius Black's experience. W...

We're going back to school, and specifically Latin class, on this episode. Dr. Mitchell Parks (Knox College) joins us once again to connect classical studies to Harry Potter , but this time, we're not looking as far back as ancient times. Inspired by Mitchell's presentation at the last Harry Potter Academic Conference, we're going to the 1950s to explore the satirical Molesworth books written by G...

This special episode is a call to join us at our favorite event of the year - the Harry Potter Academic Conference! The 15th annual conference is back in person at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia this October and accepting proposals until April 10. Katy and Emily are joined by conference board members Laurie Beckoff and Lauren Camacci to reminisce about past conferences, discuss what we're l...

We're entering the Upside Down to compare Harry Potter and  Stranger Things following the Netflix series's final season. Spoilers ahead - proceed with caution! Katy, Emily, and producer Laurie reflect on the end of Stranger Things and how the series as a whole, and its conclusion in particular, connect to  Potter . Season 5 was released in three installments at the end of 2025 to mixed reviews and...

We're heading to Hermione's favorite place in this episode: the library! Ian McLaughlin, an PhD student in English who also holds an MLIS, joins Katy and Emily to reflect on libraries and librarians in Harry Potter , following up on his recent presentations at the Harry Potter Academic Conference. Hogwarts librarian Madam Pince is portrayed as extremely strict and irritable, but is she unfairly ma...

We're back with another episode recorded live at the 14th annual Harry Potter Academic Conference, which took place online in October 2025. Katy and Emily are joined by several conference regulars—producer Laurie Beckoff, John Anthony Dunne, Louise Freeman-Davis, Lorrie Kim, Mark-Anthony Lewis, and Mitchell Parks—to discuss the gradual encroachment of fascism in the Potter series in light of recen...

Why is there a lack of service businesses in the wizarding world? Following up on our earlier episode about magical businesses , our technical director, Emma Nicholson, joins us to continue the conversation. Perhaps there aren't many businesses that provide services, as opposed to goods, to wizards because people with magical skills should be able to easily do household tasks for themselves. Not b...

We're voyaging out to the farthest reaches of space and into the deepest recesses of the mind for another look at Harry Potter and Star Trek . Potterversity regular Louise Freeman, a retired psychology professor and licensed behavioral analyst who previously joined us for two episodes on memory in Harry Potter , contacted us after our Star Trek  episode to share another connection that occurred to...

Space: the final frontier. Our Prime Directive: to boldly examine what Harry Potter has in common with Star Trek . Hosts Katy and Emily and producer Laurie have found themselves making Star Trek references on past episodes and realized that while Harry Potter is often compared to Star Wars , the future United Federation of Planets is less commonly put in dialogue with the wizarding world. We explo...

Let's get down to business - in both the wizarding world and the fandom. Abigail Kohler, adjunct lecturer at Brown University's Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship, is relatively new to Harry Potter but was quickly introduced to scholarship on the series through the Harry Potter Academic Conference at Chestnut Hill College. In her own presentation at the 2024 conference, "From Wizard Wheezes to Ets...

Vengeance is sweet - sometimes. Explore revenge in Harry Potter and the ancient Greek Oresteia by Aeschylus. We welcome back to the show classicist Dr. Mitchell Parks (Knox College), who presented on "Dumbledore, Agamemnon, and the Imperfect Legacy" at the 2024 Harry Potter Academic Conference. He was struck by the epigraph from The Libation Bearers , one of the plays that makes up the Oresteia ,...

Our listeners carry on the conversation about memory and more in Harry Potter in this special episode straight from the owlery. We were excited to hear from several listeners after our two-part episode on memory, so producer Laurie Beckoff joined hosts Katy and Emily to discuss what they had to say. We talk about when fan mail is also intellectual discourse before considering the thoughts we recei...

On this episode, we examine the relationship between humor and resistance to authoritarianism. Harry Potter scholar and stand-up comedian Mark-Anthony Lewis joins Katy and Emily to talk about what makes something funny. Benign violation theory says that humor is found in something safe - for example, you can laugh at someone falling if they aren't seriously hurt, and you can tickle someone you kno...

We're always holding space for Harry Potter , but no one does it quite like the Harry Potter Academic Conference. Our favorite event of the year was back in person at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia in October and full of interesting insights as usual. Katy and Emily talk with Potterversity producer and conference communications coordinator Laurie Beckoff and conference vice chair Lauren Cam...

Don't judge a book by its cover - this episode is about how looks can be deceiving in Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts . We're joined by Eizabeth Baird Hardy (Mayland Community College) to discuss her chapter in The Ivory Tower, Harry Potter, and Beyond , "Muggle Worthy: Deceptive Exteriors and Outsized Interiors in the Wizarding World." There is an implicit lesson in the wizarding world - one un...

In the spirit of the spooky season, this episode is all about spirits and specters in the wizarding world. Emily and Katy, who recently published a new article titled "Harry Potter and Historical Witness: The Pensieve and the Time-Turner," are joined by Louise Freeman, fresh off our two-part episode on memory, and David Martin, member of the winning Hufflepuff team on Harry Potter: Hogwarts Tourna...

The journey to the past continues as we delve deeper into the magic of memory in Harry Potter . In the second part of our conversation with Louise Freeman, we continue discussing the ethics of Memory Charms and move on to the memories stored in wizarding portraits and Horcruxes. Magical portraits can carry some of the memories of their subjects, allowing viewers to converse with them after their d...

Explore how memory operates in magical ways in Harry Potter that might be quite unlike the Muggle understanding of memory. Regular contributor Louise Freeman is professor emerita of psychology at Mary Baldwin University and a licensed behavior analyst and service provider for special needs individuals. She considers the implications of being able to store and share memories in a Pensieve. While th...

What makes a monster, and how do we relate to them, especially when they produce works of art we love? There are plenty of monsters in the wizarding world, but the author has also been charged with being monstrous herself following her comments on transgender people. Katy and Emily talk to Lorrie Kim, author of Snape: The Definitive Analysis of Hogwarts's Mysterious Potions Master and host of the...

Venture to the ancient past to explore Harry Potter and the Aeneid as foundational texts. Dr. Mitchell Parks (Knox College) joins us to discuss intertextuality and Harry Potter ’s dialogue with classical works like Virgil’s Aeneid . In his chapter in The Ivory Tower, Harry Potter, and Beyond , he examines what it means for a text to be “foundational” in various ways – as a work of literature, on a...

Get a preview of the latest Harry Potter academic anthology, featuring a diverse array of essays on the series. We're joined by Dr. Lana Whited (Ferrum College), editor of The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter (University of Missouri Press, 2002), one of the first anthologies focused on the series, and now the second volume, The Ivory Tower, Harry Potter, and Beyond (University of Missouri Press, 2024)...

Get swept away by the cinematic sounds of the Wizarding World. We're joined by musicologist Dr. Daniel White (University of Huddersfield), who has a new book about the music of two major fantasy franchises, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings . He talks about the musical foundation laid by John Williams in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and how subsequent composers built off his work both wi...

In the last of our episodes featuring contributors to our book, Potterversity: Essays Exploring the World of Harry Potter , take a look at two very different teachers: Albus Dumbledore and Dolores Umbridge. Our guests are Dr. M'Balia Thomas (University of Kansas) and Dr. Brent Satterly (Widener University), whose chapters focus on Hogwarts professors. Both found ways to connect with students throu...

Hop on a tour of the UK this summer to see Harry Potter and more beloved works of fantasy come to life. On this episode, sponsored by History Bites Tours, Katy and Emily speak with History Bites founder Solomon Schmidt about the literary-inspired tour of England and Scotland he'll be leading in July. Solomon is the author of eight books in his History Bites series and host of the History Bites You...

We're in for a bit of fun as we look at games in the wizarding world and using games to bring the wizarding world to the classroom. Katy and Emily are joined by two more contributors to our book, Potterversity: Essays Exploring the World of Harry Potter . Laurie Beckoff, our producer, and Tison Pugh, Pegasus Professor of English at the University of Central Florida and author of Harry Potter and B...