User:ImaginesTigers/sandbox4

This is a survey of works that are not currently used in the article (i.e., they were published after the 2022 FAR).

It should be useful for all sections and will be populated over the next week or so.

You are encouraged to add any journal articles or books (academic publishers strongly preferred) about Harry Potter or Rowling, or that mention Rowling.

Transgender (various sections)

Anything that labels Rowling or her views is in bold.

Potter Stinks (2025)

Chez, Keridiana (2025). Potter Stinks: Gender and Species in JK Rowling's Harry Potter Series. University Press of Mississippi.

Primary topic: Harry Potter/J. K. Rowling

• (I have no access to this source; Introduction is publicly available): "From depicting troubling trans villains in her recent novels to deriding a headline referring to "people who menstruate" for not using the word "women" to uncritically amplifying the voices of people known to be antitrans, Rowling roused suspicions about her politics in the years before 2020. The question of Rowling's trans-exclusionary politics became undeniable with the publication of her June essay [...] Framing herself as a well-intentioned researcher who only accidentally aligned herself with trans-exclusionary tweeters, Rowling attempted to proclaim support for trans people while reaffirming ideas that hurt them."

The Ivory Tower, Harry Potter, and Beyond

Whited, Lana A., ed. (2024). The Ivory Tower, Harry Potter, and Beyond: More Essays on the Works of J. K. Rowling. University of Missouri Press.

• (I have no access to this source; provided by Victoriaearle): "But in June 2020, Rowling's manifesto led some people to label her as a trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF), a term first used in 2008 that has more recently evolved as "gender critical".
• "For many fans and scholars, there were at least two surprising aspects of the whole controversy. First, the 2020 tweets were inconsistent with statements of support for the transgender community Rowling had made previously. For example, she has said that transgender individuals 'need and deserve protection' and 'pose zero threat to others' and has voiced support for 'every trans person's right to live in a way that feels authentic to them. [...]
• The second and perhaps most surprising aspect of the 2020 tweets was the shockingly simplistic understanding of gender identity reflected in them and the inconsistency of these seemingly concrete views with the ideology of her novels. [...]
• More useful for #Public image & already used in article) "[...] the damage to Rowling's reputation has proven extensive. Fans have found themselves no longer comfortable reading (or watching) Rowling's work, or comfortable only so long as they do not contribute to her income. Scholars have declined to participate in publishing or other professional projects [...] Publishing houses have withdrawn support for Harry Potter–related manuscripts in progress [example of Cecilia Konchar Farr].
• "Rowling's fall from near-universal approval has also irrevocably changed the author's relationship not only with fans, readers, and scholars of the series but with her work themselves, hastening the phenomenon that [...] Roland Barthes has called "the death of the author".

Open at the Close: Literary Essays on Harry Potter (2022)

• Konchar Farr, Cecilia, ed. (2022). Open at the Close: Literary Essays on Harry Potter. University Press of Mississippi.
• Primary topic: Harry Potter literary criticism

Introduction (Farr)

• "When Rowling used her sizeable Twitter pulpit to denounce transwomen as something other than women—a topic that had, on the surface, nothing to do with the Harry Potter novels—it tore a painful hole through the fandom. [...] Rowling’s choice to publicly support an outspoken bigot and then follow up with her own (beautifully written) bigotry, presented us with a grim quandary, made even more urgent by the activist context we were living in. And Rostad’s call for accountability won the day. My book clubbers called Rowling out and drew each another in, generously embracing one another’s varied responses and choices while emphatically rejecting the transphobia—or trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERF)—that Rowling defended."

• "Most of the fandom came to a similar conclusion* that summer, posting pro-trans memes and offering up ideas for protest. [...] The Harry Potter Alliance, a social justice organisation that sprang from the Potter fandom, MuggleNet and the Leaky Cauldron all condemned Rowling's position, affirmed that trans women are women, and encouraged readers to continue to use the Harry Potter books to "explore their own identities while spreading love and acceptance" (MuggleNet and Leaky Cauldron joint statement). [Outlines Radcliffe's support...] Because the response was so immediate, so unanimous, and so typical of the Harry Potter community that had evolved over the years."

Harry Potter and the Other: Race, Justice and Difference in the Wizarding World

Dahlen, Sarah Park; Elizabeth Thomas, Ebony, eds. (2022). Harry Potter and the Other: Race, Justice, and Difference in the Wizarding World. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-4968-4057-8.

• Primary topic: Harry Potter literary criticism

Introduction:

• "Additionally, Rowling's stature within the literary world, and the place that the storyworld she created holds in the hearts of millions, carry extra responsibility—responsibility that hateful remarks striking at the heart of young readers' trans and nonbinary identities abdicate. In deciding whether to proceed with this critical volume, we sought to listen to, and center, the perspectives of Black trans and nonbinary authors and scholars. As award winning author Kacen Callender writes: [...] in this volume, Tolonda Henderson provides ethical clarity in their discussion of Rowling's 2020 essay about her transphobic comments. [...] We concur with Callender and Henderson."

Contributor essay (not about Rowling directly)

Essay: "Chosen Names, Changed Appearances, and Unchallenged Binaries: Trans-Exclusionary Themes in Harry Potter" (Henderson is a PhD student, published by an academic publisher)

• "In addition to being the only character with a chosen name unrelated to his given name, Voldemort is also unique in having a permanent and welcomed changed to his physical appearance. To contain this type of physical change within the person who is described as "the most evil wizard of all time" (HP5) is not a neutral choice. In the context of the deadnaming discussed above [regarding Dumbledore/Voldemort] and the strict policing of the magic/nonmagic binary discussed below, this containment implies that transgender people who seek out gender-affirming surgery are on thr wrong side of justice and history."
• "At the same time, we should absolutely hold You-Know-Who responsible for her bigotry and the harm that she continues to cause. [...] The binary essentialism echoes the biological essentialism at the heart of She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's transphobia."
• "Gender is not, however, the only binary in the series. While She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has imported the gender binary from the world in which she was raised, she has invented another binary—magic/nonmagic—which is central to the way the wizarding world works. A person is either born with magical talent or they are not.

Harry Potter and the Wizarding World: The Transfiguration of a Franchise (2025)

• Primary topic: J. K. Rowling/Wizarding World

Brummitt, Cassie (2025). From Harry Potter to the Wizarding World. Edinburgh University Press.

• "In December 2019, J. K. Rowling posted a tweet about Maya Forstater, a woman who lost her job for tweeting that sex is immutable and not to be conflated with gender identity: Forstater refused to use the pronouns 'she' and 'her' to describe trans women in her workplace, because she believed trans women should not be described as women. Rowling first tweeted in support of Forstater: ['Dress however you like' tweet]. Since then, Rowling has continued to voice her opinions on gender identity and transgender rights, particularly within a UK legal and cultural context. This discourse has taken place primarily on online platforms, with tweets ranging from sarcastic: ['People who menstruate' tweet] to defensive in the use of 'woman' as a category of sex rather than gender: ['If sex isn't real' tweet.] And, in June 2020, Rowling doubled down on this rhetoric by posting an essay on her personal website [title]. This essay presents an argument against the rights of trans women to identify as women, much of which is familiar from and oft-repeated within trans-exclusionary and gender-critical feminist discourse.

"Rowling is just one figure embroiled in a larger cultural debate taking place in the United Kingdom (and beyond), and the cultural, political and social cultural context around trans rights is an important and sensitive topic which is beyond the ability of this book to discuss with suitable nuance. In this preface, however, I want to briefly address the issue because Rowling has central significance in this book. [Outlines the book's function as evaluating Rowling as a kind of brand manage and authority.]

"Rowling's public comments are nonetheless are key part of the context in which I am writing this book, and very likely to be part of the context in which this book will be received. So I would like to make it clear that I stand against hatred, prejudicie, and intolerance towards trans and non-binary people. I do not share Rowling's views on transgender rights and freedoms. Trans women are women; trans men are men; trans and non-binary people are who they say they are [...] By exploring Rowling's relationship to the evolving Harry Potter franchise, as I do in this book, it is not my intention to sympathise with, glamorise, or publicise her views, nor to cause harm to transgender communities or anyone affected by transphobic discrimination."

Mentioned briefly in Brummitt's Introduction:

• "This chapter does not discuss Rowling's social and political views in any detail, particularly in relation to her comments regarding trans-exclusionary feminism.

Brief or single mention

Hutchings, Stephen; Tolz, Vera; Chatterje-Doody, Precious; Crilley, Rhys; Gillespie, Marie (2024). "War on the Liberal (b)order". Russia, Disinformation, and the Liberal Order. Cornell University Press. pp. 212–235. doi:10.7591/jj.11981213.14. ISBN 978-1-5017-7763-9.

• Putin comment on Rowling & Rowling's response: "The fault lines that appeared within liberal democracy following the Russian invasion were keenly observed by Vladimir Putin. To the indignation of his adversaries, Putin drew parallels between Western bans on Russian institutions and the cancel culture from which the author J. K. Rowling has supposedly suffered. Rowling responded by observing that the critics of cancel culture who slaughter civilians have little credence.

Willem, C.; Lucas Platero, R. L.; Tortajada, I. (2022). "Trans-exclusionary Discourses on Social Media in Spain". Identities and Intimacies on Social Media. Routledge.

• "Some of the most outspoken opponents of this growing dismissal of biological sex are women themselves, ranging from pro-life advocates to radical feminists and prominent figures like author J. K. Rowling: "If sex isn't real, the lived reality of women globally is erased" (Rowling, 2020)."
  

Style

• "To understand these engaged readers, we need to first grant that the Harry Potter novels are record-setting bestsellers for a reason. They are exceptionally good, particularly the later ones, which meet nearly every criterion of technical excellence we introduce in literature classes (see Strand’s essay in this collection). They have vivid, dynamic characters (see Glassman) and a complex structure around a compelling plot (see Grogan and Konchar Farr andMars); they deploy innovative and imaginative language (Phillips-Mattson), address complex philosophical (McCauley), psychological (Henderson), and social ideas (Reeher and Camacci) and introduce thought-provoking moral dilemmas (Chez and Lopes). They pay attention to literary tradition in their themes and allusions (Groves and Granger) and draw attention to the issues of our time in their implications (Rose and Imady). And they also seem fresh and funny, even after multiple rereadings."

• Rowling's knack for ending chapters on cliffhangers
• Commentary on Rowling's prominent use of adverbs/stylistic quirks: "The surface-level flaws discussed above, while irrelevant to most readers' enjoyment of the Harry Potter books, have left them vulnerable to prejudicial dismissal by literary critics, who often fail to notice their more sublime aspects in their haste to decry Rowling's bad literary habits. Rowling's extensive use of adverbs extends into her adult fiction, The Casual Vacancy and the Cormoran Strike novels. Strand notes inconsistencies in Harry Potter's narrative perspective, arguing it as "debt" owed to her favourite author, Jane Austen; Strand characterises it as a "manipulation" of perspective in the range footnoted.
• Rowling's names consistently reveal inherent attributes of the character.

Genre

• Harry Potter and the Other essays:
  • "Rowling's series defied late 1990s conventions for readers, authors, and publishers of children's literature in terms of its physical size and its intergeneric narrative. [...] Rowling's intergeneric narrative incorporates traditons of psychological realism, the Bildungsroman, the mystery, the gothic, the school story, the family store, satire, and—most obviously, given those wizards and their wands—fantasy. This blend of genres challenges and complicates the series' generic affiliation". Westman says that the multi-genre approach has frustrated some readers, but "points us toward a way to recognize Rowling's dominant aesthetic: realism".
• Open At the Close essays
  • "Most of Holden's other complaints have to do with Rowling's appropriation of the British boarding-school setting, and the nostalgic conservatism of the books, and this, by Bartfield's assessment (see footnote 1 [about Rowling's prose contributing to the "infantilism" of contemporary culture]), is the consensus of critics who envision Harry Potter as primarily a school-days story. Barfield points out that the school story, post 1945, is one of the most maligned literary genres, usually panned for seeming old-fashioned and socially regressive."
  • Rowling's use of literary nonsense as a tradition of British children's literature. Quote: "Rowling cross breeds signifiers and purposefully pluralizes denotations to create a reality that is at once familiar, yet wholly unique. Indeed, the wizarding world is overrun with anagrams, puns, portmanteau words, symbolic names, and incongruities, many of which indicate the simultaneous realism and fantasy that these novels inherited from Carrollian and Learian nonsense."
• Harry Potter, The White Tower and Beyond (2024)
  • M. Katherine Grimes' essay in this volume is the first peer-reviewed attempt to place [The Casual]Vacancy in a literary context, locating it in the subgenre of social realism."
  • Rowling's subversion and parody of other genres.

Reception

Open at the Close

• Social: Rowling's post-publishing 'canon' reveals & Cho Chang; after-the-fact diversification.

• According to Strand, unfavourable criticism had an anti-populist, sometimes elitist bent, typically critiquing readers and other critics over Rowling directly..

• "though no living author's work has ever been the subject of as much critique as Rowling's Harry Potter novels, this tsunami of attention has done very little to raise her reputation as a writer. Besides the rush of new world in the field—I think of Shira Wolosky's Riddles of Harry Potter, Beatrice Groves's Literary Allusion in Harry Potter, and Patrick McCauley's Into the Pensieve—few of the quality anthologised essays or book-length treatment that take Harry and his creator seriously as literature have ever penetrated the public of media mind." Granger argues for Russian formalism—an approach that emphasis the work and de-emphasises cultural context and biography—as an analytic school that would "correct the Cinderella story and kid lit writer albatrosses Rowling has not been able to shake".

Literary criticism

"Very little scholarship on The Casual Vacancy exists, except for a half dozen articles on suicide, self-mutilation, and child abuse."

Social (gender/race) & political

• A very good high-level survey of scholarly opinion on house-elves "Several critics have discussed Rowling's depiction of house-elves in books 1–4. As Farah Mendlesohn, Elaine Ostry, and Brycchan Carey all point out, Rowling's depiction of Dobby and his fellow elves contains uncomfortable echoes of many of the stereotypes held by whites of enslaved African-Americans. Simple, loyal, and childlike, happy to serve their betters, Rowling's house-elves speak in a patois closer to 1930s and 1940s Hollywood misconceptions of "darky" dialect than to any actual African American speech pattern." For example: Carey as "more hopeful, declaring that Hermione's political actions reflect Rowling's explicit intention to promote 'political participation for young people', an overt social justice goal". Horne provides his own views on subsequent pages (arguing that Rowling "denigrates Hermione's activism"); "Rowling's later texts demonstrate the many ways in which many of the adults [...] collude with the racism that is articulated on a more overt level by those they are purportedly fighting against"

• Horne also writes extensively on human supremacy in the hierarchy / goblins regulated ("subordinate") by the government.
• Lycanthropy:, "stigma and discrimination, including [...] linking the werewolf to sexual nonnormativity".
• Wizarding World authoritarian government: "Wizard and Muggle history intersect, despite the antipathy of the former and the ignorance of the latter. They share the same world. [...] Rowling nevertheless highlights the problematic consequences of wizard separatism, namely harmful ideologies, personal tragedies, and authoritarian government. These ghost plots demonstrate not only that secrecy and segregation fail in keeping the two groups separate, but also that the keeping of secrets poses dangers to the values of inclusion and liberty."
• Fantastic Beasts intended by Rowling as political analogy about the rise of populism/Brexit/Trump

Public image

Open at the Close

On fan communities increasing in size in the gap between books four and five:

• "The first four books in the series appeared only a year apart in the United States, and the three that followed only two years apart, so the space between these two middle novels and the nature of the narrative stopping place, at the very moment of Voldemort's return, left readers anxious. [...] the sense of urgency of these Harry Potter fans—their desire for news, their need for comfort, even their yearning for escape [from 2000–2001]—changed everything. It conjured a more active readership that multipled quickly in online forums; MuggleNet started in 1999, and the Leaky Cauldron, in 2000 and then grew exponentially in the years that followed. These readers took matters into their own hands, sharing ideas, and creating their own Harry Potter series.

Sources I have no access to

• Potter Stinks
• Whited 2024

Chapters in books

• Open at the Close
  • Strand, Emily. "Said Hermione Earnestly: Harry Potter's Prose, and Why It Doesn't Matter". In Konchar Farr (2022), pp. 35–47.
  • Granger, John. "The Russian Formalist Heart of the Harry Potter Series". In Konchar Farr (2022), pp. 106–117.
  • Phillips-Mattson, Christina. "Say the Magic Word: Spellwork and Legacy of Nonsense". In Konchar Farr (2022), pp. 48–62.
  • Rose, Jonathan A. "'Loony, Loopy Lupin': (Sexual) Nonnormativity, Transgression, and the Werewolf". In Konchar Farr (2022), pp. 154–165.

• Harry Potter and the Other
  • Horne, Jackie C. "Harry and the Other: Multiculturalism and Social Justice Anti-Racism in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series". In Dahlen & Elizabeth Thomas (2022), pp. 17–50.
  • Westman, Karin E. "The Narrative Politics of Harry Potter". In Dahlen & Elizabeth Thomas (2022), pp. 51–70.

• Whited 2024
  • McDaniel, Kathryn N. "Secrecy and Segregation in the Wizarding World's Hidden Histories". In Whited (2024).
  • Kullmann, Carsten. "Politics of Suppression and Violence in Fantastic Beasts". In Whited (2024).