A useful new book has been acquired by the Thammasat University Library to help us understand one of the leading publishing phenomena of recent years.

Inside the World of Harry Potter: Critical Essays on the Books and Films describes how and why J. K. Rowling’s character Harry Potter became so popular on a worldwide scale. The TU Library has all the Harry Potter books and films, in the original English language editions as well as in Thai translation.

The library also owns other books which try to relate Harry Potter to other fields of study, such as Harry Potter and International Relations; The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy: Hogwarts for Muggles; and Harry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle ran Hogwarts.

A number of TU students have written theses involving Harry Potter. Among them are Child abuse and child neglect in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and The Casual Vacancy (2015) by Kamonlaporn Sirisophon, an M.A. thesis at the TU Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Liberal Arts. There is also The Christian point of view in C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter (2016) by Nitwadee Silkoon, another thesis at the TU Department of English Language and Literature. And there are Corpus linguistics and systemic functional grammar of Harry Potter and the deathly hallows (2012) by Chayanphat Assawapattananon and A translation analysis of J.K. Rowlings’s Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban” from English into Thai (2005) by Siriporn Chamroensap, both theses at the TU Language Institute. Finally, there is Cultural globalization and the IPE significance of the Harry Potter phenomenon (2006) by Buncha Wongrattananukul at the TU Faculty of Political Science. All of these are available at the TU Library for students to consult, if they are considering an academic research project or thesis involving Harry Potter.

These examples should remind us that it can be useful to keep an element of sanook in our research. If the Harry Potter books are our favorite reading material, then it makes sense to try to find an academic research project that involves them. Inside the World of Harry Potter: Critical Essays on the Books and Films includes writings on such themes as mothers, death, fatness, time travel, alcohol, social class, adoption, and fidelity in the world of Harry Potter, among other themes. More essays and articles may be found on the TU Library databases, and from the TU Interlibrary Loan Service, there are scholarly books available such as

• Quidditch through the Ages;
• Harry Potter and the Bible;
• Transforming Harry: The Adaptation of Harry Potter in the Transmedia Age;
• Reading Harry Potter: Critical Essays;
• Reading Harry Potter Again: New Critical Essays; The Politics of Harry Potter;
• Teaching Harry Potter: The Power of Imagination in Multicultural Classrooms;
• From Here to Hogwarts: Essays on Harry Potter Fandom and Fiction;
• Hermione Granger Saves the World: Essays on the Feminist Heroine of Hogwarts;
• Wizards vs. Muggles: Essays on Identity and the Harry Potter Universe;
• Heroism in the Harry Potter Series;
• The Secret Life of Stories: From Don Quixote to Harry Potter, How Understanding Intellectual Disability Transforms the Way We Read;
• The Irresistible Rise of Harry Potter;
• Unauthorized Harry Potter and the Art of Spying;
• The Science of Harry Potter: The Spellbinding Science Behind the Magic, Gadgets,Potions, and More!;
• Playing Harry Potter: Essays and Interviews on Fandom and Performance;
• A Charmed Life: Harry Potter: A History of Magic;
• The Mystery of Harry Potter: A Catholic Family Guide;
• A Parent’s Guide to Harry Potter;
• Faith Journey through Fantasy Lands: A Christian Dialogue with Harry Potter, Star Wars, and the Lord of the Rings;
• From Homer to Harry Potter: A Handbook on Myth and Fantasy;
• A Wizard of Their Age: Critical Essays from the Harry Potter Generation;
• Muggles, Monsters and Magicians: A Literary Analysis of the Harry Potter Series;
• Harry Potter and Convergence Culture: Essays on Fandom and the Expanding Potterverse;
• Ambiguity in “Star Wars” and “Harry Potter”: A (Post)Structuralist Reading of Two Popular Myths;
• Harry Potter Still Recruiting: An Inner Look at Harry Potter Fandom;
• Teaching with Harry Potter: Essays on Classroom Wizardry from Elementary School to College;
• One Fine Potion: The Literary Magic of Harry Potter;
• Harry Potter and the Millennials: Research Methods and the Politics of the Muggle Generation;
• The Deathly Hallows Lectures: the Hogwarts Professor Explains the Final Harry Potter Adventure;
• Looking for God in Harry Potter;
• Who Killed Albus Dumbledore?: What Really Happened in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince?: Six Expert Harry Potter Detectives Examine the Evidence;
• Transfiguring Transcendence in Harry Potter, His Dark Materials and Left Behind: Fantasy Rhetorics and Contemporary Visions of Religious Identity;
• Literary Allusion in Harry Potter; Scholarly Studies in Harry Potter: Applying Academic Methods to a Popular Text;
• The Science of Harry Potter: How Magic Really Works;
• Ontological Humility: Lord Voldemort and the Philosophers;
• The Wisdom of Harry Potter: What Our Favorite Hero Teaches Us about Moral Choices;
• The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Harry Potter;
• Females and Harry Potter: Not All That Empowering;
• Harry Potter: Feminist Friend or Foe?;
• Harry Potter: Page to Screen, the Complete Filmmaking Journey;
• Into the Pensieve: The Philosophy and Mythology of Harry Potter;
• Harry Potter for Nerds II: Essays for Fans, Academics, and Lit Geeks;
• Harry Potter’s World Wide Influence;
• Peace and Resistance in Youth Cultures: Reading the Politics of Peacebuilding from Harry Potter to The Hunger Games;
• Harry Potter and the Paganization of Culture;
• Morality for Muggles: Ethics in the Bible and the World of Harry Potter;
• Teaching Fantasy Novels: From the Hobbit to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire;
• The Sociology of Harry Potter: 22 Enchanting Essays on the Wizarding World;
• The Subversive Harry Potter: Adolescent Rebellion and Containment in the J. K. Rowling Novels;
• The Law and Harry Potter; Harry Potter and the Order of the Court: The J. K. Rowling Copyright Case and the Question of Fair Use;
• The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter: Perspectives on a Literary Phenomenon;
• The Riddles of Harry Potter: Secret Passages and Interpretive Quests;
• If Harry Potter Ran General Electric: Leadership Wisdom from the World of the Wizards;

and many others.

Depending on the focus of our research, we may find it more useful to look at writings on Harry Potter from the perspective of politics, sociology, philosophy, law, religious studies, pop culture, educational approaches, or literature. And there are also many academic articles available for download from TU Library databases. Students may begin to wonder if, with all of this material already published, there can be room for writing anything original about Harry Potter. If we have read any series of books enough times and like them enough, we will surely have our own personal point of view to express.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)