This summer marks twenty years since J.K Rowling published her first Harry Potter novel in the U.S. Since then, readership of the novels has expanded continually; there has never been a more successful book series (450 million copies sold and counting) or a more culturally prominent literary phenomenon. “Muggle” is now in the Oxford dictionary, and still today the series holds a venerable place on the New York Times Bestseller List.

But despite this prominence, literary critical study of Rowling’s novels has thus far been limited, even as popular books, articles, and blogs for general readers proliferate. While philosophers, historians, theologians, sociologists, even business professors have take on Harry Potter, literature scholars (outside of the children’s literature community) have not yet given these novels the careful scholarly attention they deserve. This book attempts to remedy that by assembling a series of literary critical essays on the HP novels. The editor is looking for essays from various perspectives, both text and reader-centered, using digital humanities, critical race, feminist, and gender studies, eco-critical, materialist, postcolonial and other approaches. Successful submissions will consider the novels primarily as literary, not cultural, phenomena and will not approach the texts first as children’s books.

Please send abstracts to ckfarr@stkate.edu by December 31, 2017. Full essays will be due in March. Again, only literary analyses will be considered.