Reading, Writing, Rowling

We at Potterversity love house-elves! Join us for our valentine to Dobby, Winky, Kreacher, and Hokey and their persistent relevance for understanding injustice. House-elf fans Emily and Katy talk with Dr. Christine Schott (Erskine College) about how the house-elves keep Harry Potter relevant to social issues today. Given the upheaval this new generation of readers sees in our world, Christine tells us, the Harry Potter stories give us a "training ground" for figuring out how to respond to those problems and complexities. The unsatisfying, unresolved issue of house-elf enslavement leads us to continue thinking about this wizarding world oppression in ways that help us consider persistent injustices in our world. The house-elves can be related to all kinds of oppressed peoples, including those bound in chattel slavery, house-wives (as Katy has argued), immigrant communities, and even artificial intelligence (as Emily has explored). Yet the house-elves' ambivalent portrayal in the Harry Potter series as "ha