What do you think?
Rate this book
Harry Potter and Convergence Culture: Essays on Fandom and the Expanding Potterverse
Since the 1997 publication of the first Harry Potter novel, the "Potterverse" has seen the addition of eight feature films (with a ninth in production), the creation of the interactive Pottermore© website, the release of myriad video games, the construction of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios, several companion books (such as Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them), critical essays and analyses, and the 2016 debut of the original stage play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
This collection of new essays interprets the Wizarding World beyond the books and films through the lens of convergence culture. Contributors explore how online communities tackle Sorting and games like the Quidditch Cup and the Triwizard Tournament, and analyze how Fantastic Beasts and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child are changing fandom and the canon alike.
This collection of new essays interprets the Wizarding World beyond the books and films through the lens of convergence culture. Contributors explore how online communities tackle Sorting and games like the Quidditch Cup and the Triwizard Tournament, and analyze how Fantastic Beasts and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child are changing fandom and the canon alike.
- GenresHarry PotterNonfiction
226 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 9, 2018
4 people are currently reading
17 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 24, 2019
Read for my dissertation case study on Fantastic Beasts, and wish I had more time to delve into the chapters on Cursed Child! I thought this was an interesting balance on perspectives on the various new entries to the transmedia Wizarding World, and asked fascinating and relevant questions on authorial intent, fan contributions, and corporate interests. I was particularly struck by the epilogue warning that the peril of expanding the Wizarding World is the narrative not living up to our expectations (a la Sherlock Holmes), and asking how we want to balance that risk with our desire for more.
PopSugar Reading Challenge: a book (edited) by two female authors
PopSugar Reading Challenge: a book (edited) by two female authors
July 13, 2023
J.K. Rowling’s most recent Robert Galbraith mystery, The Ink Black Heart, was interpreted by some to be a response to the controversy begun in 2020 on Twitter, but she insisted that she’d written it before any of that developed. It’s kind of strange, since like the first and second in the series at least, it was kind of obviously based on Rowling’s own experiences as a fairly well-known personality and creator. And actually, anyone willing to doubt such a conclusion can probably read Harry Potter and Convergence Culture, a work of somewhat academic study, which heavily suggests many of the things Rowling probably doesn’t like about being famous.
No, not the idea that Harry Potter became widely and wildly embraced, but how. Listen. I get how these things work. I have my geek fingers in many pies. One of them is Star Trek, which experienced a lot of fandom pains in the late ‘90s to early ‘00s, when fans got tired of all the new stuff, had found a lot of other shows that covered their basic interests, loved talking about the old stuff, and had begun to diverge from screen material to things like novels based on the franchise to even fan productions. In short, Convergence Culture is a litany of ways the writers themselves have mostly moved on from being fans and yet still retain (at that time; it’s easy to assume many of them quit formal associations back in 2020) tangential interest in communities they formed out of their initial interest.
So it’s a lot of passive-aggressive complaints. It’s pseudo-academic essays that often stay in their starting blocks, often written by doctoral candidates or actual professors, writing at a depth that would barely qualify for a C. And nearly each one of them has a weird obsession with some guy named Henry Jenkins, who had previously written about “convergence culture” (the whole thing is filled with the scholastic version of corporate gibberish, as if you use enough fancy words it makes you sound like an authority), who of course contributes not one sentence to this book.
In short, I read this because I thought it would be interesting to learn more about Harry Potter fan culture, but I ended up learning too much. I learned these fans have axes to grind. I learned some of them believe quidditch can be taken seriously as a game, even though to play it in the real world you have to carry a pipe between your legs. Even if people were eagerly playing it “with no affinity for Harry Potter” in 2016 or 2017, or today, in fifty years Harry Potter will still be enjoyed but quidditch will no longer be played, except by fans. A real sport it will never be. Not a chance. Not as currently played, anyway. This is a collection of essays by people who don’t understand this. This is a collection of essays by people who haven’t really thought any of this out. This is a collection of essays by fans I would just as well have nothing to do with, thank you very much. They’re nuts.
Rowling already knew that. Hopefully she never bothered with this. Waste of time.
No, not the idea that Harry Potter became widely and wildly embraced, but how. Listen. I get how these things work. I have my geek fingers in many pies. One of them is Star Trek, which experienced a lot of fandom pains in the late ‘90s to early ‘00s, when fans got tired of all the new stuff, had found a lot of other shows that covered their basic interests, loved talking about the old stuff, and had begun to diverge from screen material to things like novels based on the franchise to even fan productions. In short, Convergence Culture is a litany of ways the writers themselves have mostly moved on from being fans and yet still retain (at that time; it’s easy to assume many of them quit formal associations back in 2020) tangential interest in communities they formed out of their initial interest.
So it’s a lot of passive-aggressive complaints. It’s pseudo-academic essays that often stay in their starting blocks, often written by doctoral candidates or actual professors, writing at a depth that would barely qualify for a C. And nearly each one of them has a weird obsession with some guy named Henry Jenkins, who had previously written about “convergence culture” (the whole thing is filled with the scholastic version of corporate gibberish, as if you use enough fancy words it makes you sound like an authority), who of course contributes not one sentence to this book.
In short, I read this because I thought it would be interesting to learn more about Harry Potter fan culture, but I ended up learning too much. I learned these fans have axes to grind. I learned some of them believe quidditch can be taken seriously as a game, even though to play it in the real world you have to carry a pipe between your legs. Even if people were eagerly playing it “with no affinity for Harry Potter” in 2016 or 2017, or today, in fifty years Harry Potter will still be enjoyed but quidditch will no longer be played, except by fans. A real sport it will never be. Not a chance. Not as currently played, anyway. This is a collection of essays by people who don’t understand this. This is a collection of essays by people who haven’t really thought any of this out. This is a collection of essays by fans I would just as well have nothing to do with, thank you very much. They’re nuts.
Rowling already knew that. Hopefully she never bothered with this. Waste of time.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews