Harry Potter Lectures to be Given at St. Andrew’s Today and Tomorrow

50 Harry Potter related lectures have been scheduled to take place at St. Andrew’s University over the course of the next two days. Scholars will discuss British national identity, the role of paganism, and how death is portrayed and dealt with through out the series. The lectures have been organized by Professor John Patrick Pazdziora from St. Andrew’s School of English, and
Father Micah Snell from the the University’s Institute for Theology,
Imagination and the Arts (ITIA). An anthology (a collection of literary works) on the lectures is planned to be published in 2013. Key note speakers include John Granger, author of The Deathly Hallows Lectures. His lecture at St. Andrew’s is titled “A Brand of Fictional Magic: Reading Harry Potter as Literature”. The BBC reports:

Prof Pazdziora said: “We can’t avoid the fact
that Harry Potter is the main narrative experience of an entire
generation – the children who literally grew up with Harry Potter.

“The Harry Potter novels are simply the most important and
influential children’s books of the late-20th and early 21st Centuries.”

You can read the entire article reported by the BBC here.