Harry Potter expert to speak at Cornell College Oct. 30

MOUNT VERNON—On the cusp of All Hallows Eve, the “Hogwarts Professor” comes to Cornell to explain both how Harry cast his spell over readers around the world and the edifying magic of traditional English literature and fantasy.

John Granger, author of The Deathly Hallows Lectures, will explore the meaning of J.K. Rowling’s eye imagery in her series finale as well as its Christian content in a fun review of the world’s fastest selling book and best-selling series on Thursday, Oct. 30, at 6:30 p.m. in Cole Library on the Cornell College campus. Admission is free to the lecture, titled “The Eyes of Harry Potter: Deathly Hallows’ Spiritual Vision.”

Granger is best known for explaining the artistry, meaning, and popularity of Rowling’s Harry Potter novels. His four books, How Harry Cast His Spell, Unlocking Harry Potter: Five Keys for the Serious Reader, The Deathly Hallows Lectures, and Harry Meets Hamlet and Scrooge: A Literary Companion to Harry Potter, are used in university classrooms from Princeton to Pepperdine.

Granger has been a featured speaker at six academic and fan conferences, and his theories and thoughts have been chronicled in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. In addition to almost 100 radio talk show appearances, Granger has been interviewed on CNN, MSNBC and A&E. The DVD of the Order of the Phoenix movie includes an interview with Granger in the DVD extras.

As an ordained Orthodox Christian Reader (Psalte) and classicist trained at Phillips Exeter Academy and the University of Chicago, Granger takes his bearings from the Western and Eastern traditions, spiritual and philosophical. In addition to talks on Harry Potter, Granger has also been a featured speaker at a C. S. Lewis International Conference (Past Watchful Dragons, 2005) and the New York C. S. Lewis Society (February 2008) as well. He delights in explaining the relevance and brilliance of the medieval imagination and traditional psychology for understanding not only the popularity of Lewis, Tolkien and Rowling, but how we are meant to live in order to be fully human. Granger says great authors help us achieve with story what Lewis said was the end of human existence: “conforming the soul to reality.”

Granger lives with his wife and seven children in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley.