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Learn moreDespite their decades-long, phenomenal success, the Harry Potter novels have attracted relatively little attention from literary critics and scholars. While popular books, articles, blogs, and fan sites for general readers proliferate, and while philosophers, historians, theologians, sociologists, psychologists, and even business professors have taken on book-length studies and edited essay collections about Harry Potter, literature scholars have paid few serious visits to the Potterverse. Could it be that scholars are still reluctant to recognize popular novels, especially those with genre labels "children's literature" or "fantasy," as worthy subjects for academic study?
This book challenges that oversight, assembling and foregrounding some of the best literary critical work by scholars trying to move the needle on these novels to reflect their importance to twenty-first-century literary culture. In Open at the Close, contributors consciously address Harry Potter primarily as a literary phenomenon rather than a cultural one. They interrogate the novels on many levels, but they come together around the overarching question: What is it about these books? At their heart, what is it that makes the Harry Potter novels so exceptionally compelling, so irresistible to their readers, and so relevant in our time?
Cecilia Konchar Farr is professor of English and dean of the College of Liberal and Creative Arts at West Liberty University in West Virginia. Among her publications are The Ulysses Delusion; Reading Oprah; and a student-generated collection of essays about the Harry Potter novels, A Wizard of Their Age.
Gabriel Vaughan is an Audie Award-winning narrator and classically trained actor. He grew up without television in western Massachusetts and listened to a lot of "books on tape" as a kid, so narrating audiobooks enjoyably feels like coming full circle. He is a founding member of the Tennessee Shakespeare Company and co-owner of Little Town Studios together with his wife and fellow narrator, Piper Goodeve. He has a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and studied acting in London at British American Drama Academy.
Sarah Sampino graduated from the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, where she was trained specifically in voice acting and audiobook narration by the top narrators and producers in the business. Sarah also studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, which has helped her master all kinds of British dialects. The fact that her fiance is British doesn't hurt either! The two of them now record dual and duet narrations together. On the occasion that Sarah is not being actor-y, she can be found procrastinating everything by burying her face into a fantasy novel. She loves fantasies, especially with enemies-to-lovers, or a strong and badass heroine. Romance, fantasy, YA thrillers, LitRPG-you name it!
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