Over the last couple of months when I wasn't tearing my hair out over the state of British politics or getting ready for my move to Yorkshire in early June, I was working on a number of panels and a paper for Leviosa 2016. For those of you who don't live and breathe Harry Potter fandom like I do, Leviosa is a fan convention with lots of academic and fannish content which took place in Las Vegas this July. Together with focusing on Harry Potter canon, the programming schedule also included plenty of fannish content, talks by YA authors and discussions about the contemporary YA market. The schedule featured a number of multi-fandom panels and meet-ups - Marvel, Sherlock, Inception were all popular alternatives. I was fortunate enough to have a number of proposals accepted as part of the programming. So, on 5 July I flew into LA and on 6 July I embarked on the four plus hour drive to Las Vegas and The Green Valley Ranch, where the convention was held.
For those of you unfamiliar with the convention experience, attending Leviosa was a whirlwind of excitement, energy and dashing from one panel to the next, meeting online friends in person for the first time, reconnecting with friends you have met before and - of course - making new ones. DiaCon Alley in 2011 was my first Harry Potter convention and since then I've been a regular panelist at London's annual Geek Fest, I've attended Sherlock conventions and MCM Expo ComicCon events and a couple of years ago I flew out to Atlanta, Georgia to attend the huge sci-fi and fantasy convention, DragonCon. Despite having plenty of convention experience, Leviosa was only my second convention with Harry Potter at its heart and that made it all the more special. I shared a beer with people I have interacted with on at least a weekly basis for over 6 years - but have never sat down with face to face before. Being around people with a deep knowledge and appreciation for the canon material and discussing the space of fandom itself is incredibly fulfilling.
My schedule was busy from the outset and I was still reading through my Friday morning paper and making last minute edits at 4 a.m. on the day I was due to give my paper. I spoke about Harry Potter and the Quest for Family: Heteronormativity and Homonormativity in Canon and Fanon. If heteronormativity is the persistence of the world view that promotes heterosexuality as the normal or preferred sexual orientation, Harry Potter is essentially that. Although I would argue there is a raft of queer potential in the series (the wizarding world in and of itself being inherently queer) that potential is ultimately unrealised. The post-canon interviews and Pottermore character expositions shut down any possibility for literal queering in every instance, with the one exception of Dumbledore who is not the most identifiable character for a young readership. I also looked at homonormativity and whether fanworks demonstrate an appreciation of or perpetuate the privilege which exists in queer communities and how that intersects with other kinds of privilege such as white privilege, capitalism, sexism, transmisogyny, and cissexism.
After the paper was out of the way, I just had panels to focus on where there's an element of safety in numbers. I moderated a panel which explored whether creating slash fanworks (fanworks featuring male/male pairings) could be said to be a feminist act. The panel looked at everything from the historical suppression of women's writing (fandom still being a largely female gendered space) to the question of whether writers of fanfic have the same responsibilities as those publishing original fiction. We talked about some of the problems with the prevalence of the white, cis experiences in slash fiction and discussed whether the old academic position of slash as a subversive act still holds true today. I was lucky enough to have a number of fantastic panelists with lots of thoughts on these topics so my job was really to take questions from the floor and to steer the discussion.
I also co-hosted a panel on ageism in female/female fanworks (femmeslash) where we explored the ways in which writers and artists portray some of the older women of the Potterverse. We had a great time talking about the queer coding of characters like Madam Hooch and Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank and the way in which characters like Molly Weasley, Madam Rosemerta and Dolores Umbridge are written and presented in canon and fanworks. We talked at some length about Minerva McGonagall, both her canon presentation and her more detailed Pottermore backstory. We examined whether erotica is the domain of the young and the beautiful and how far images from the media and popular culture play into our own standards of beauty. My co-host was enormously prepared and knowledgeable in this area and it was such a treat to be part of the panel with her.
Finally, I spoke on a panel on queer YA fiction, hosted a roundtable on kink, the taboo and self-censorship in fanworks and attended a number of other panels and talks, where I could just sit back and relax. I particularly enjoyed an excellent discussion on the popular Remus Lupin/Sirius Black pairing (or 'ship' in fandom parlance). I ate my fill, drank plenty of beer and Californian Merlot and donned my Auror Tonks costume for the Saturday evening. There's something I've always loved about conventions and being part of a Harry Potter convention specifically just felt very special.
write all of my fanfiction under a pseudonym (as almost everyone does) but to the people at the convention, that's the name they know me by first and foremost. A number of people there knew me solely through my stories, just as I knew people attending through their stories or their art without knowing much else about them. There's something really exciting about meeting people who have enjoyed something you created and make the effort to come up to you and tell you so. As well as that, there's the opportunity to sit with people and talk about creating in fan spaces, negotiating new platforms (such as a Livejournal to Tumblr shift) and the canon itself.
It was a whirlwind of Hogwarts robes and too many extremely interesting papers and panels to go through each one in depth. Fandom doesn't always get things right but I'm consistently impressed by the way fans keep interrogating themselves, their spaces and the things we are fed through literature, film and television.
I thoroughly enjoyed Leviosa and now I'm saving the pennies for the next one.
If you would like to hear any more detail on the content of any of my panels or papers, please let me know.
My schedule was busy from the outset and I was still reading through my Friday morning paper and making last minute edits at 4 a.m. on the day I was due to give my paper. I spoke about Harry Potter and the Quest for Family: Heteronormativity and Homonormativity in Canon and Fanon. If heteronormativity is the persistence of the world view that promotes heterosexuality as the normal or preferred sexual orientation, Harry Potter is essentially that. Although I would argue there is a raft of queer potential in the series (the wizarding world in and of itself being inherently queer) that potential is ultimately unrealised. The post-canon interviews and Pottermore character expositions shut down any possibility for literal queering in every instance, with the one exception of Dumbledore who is not the most identifiable character for a young readership. I also looked at homonormativity and whether fanworks demonstrate an appreciation of or perpetuate the privilege which exists in queer communities and how that intersects with other kinds of privilege such as white privilege, capitalism, sexism, transmisogyny, and cissexism.
After the paper was out of the way, I just had panels to focus on where there's an element of safety in numbers. I moderated a panel which explored whether creating slash fanworks (fanworks featuring male/male pairings) could be said to be a feminist act. The panel looked at everything from the historical suppression of women's writing (fandom still being a largely female gendered space) to the question of whether writers of fanfic have the same responsibilities as those publishing original fiction. We talked about some of the problems with the prevalence of the white, cis experiences in slash fiction and discussed whether the old academic position of slash as a subversive act still holds true today. I was lucky enough to have a number of fantastic panelists with lots of thoughts on these topics so my job was really to take questions from the floor and to steer the discussion.
I also co-hosted a panel on ageism in female/female fanworks (femmeslash) where we explored the ways in which writers and artists portray some of the older women of the Potterverse. We had a great time talking about the queer coding of characters like Madam Hooch and Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank and the way in which characters like Molly Weasley, Madam Rosemerta and Dolores Umbridge are written and presented in canon and fanworks. We talked at some length about Minerva McGonagall, both her canon presentation and her more detailed Pottermore backstory. We examined whether erotica is the domain of the young and the beautiful and how far images from the media and popular culture play into our own standards of beauty. My co-host was enormously prepared and knowledgeable in this area and it was such a treat to be part of the panel with her.
Finally, I spoke on a panel on queer YA fiction, hosted a roundtable on kink, the taboo and self-censorship in fanworks and attended a number of other panels and talks, where I could just sit back and relax. I particularly enjoyed an excellent discussion on the popular Remus Lupin/Sirius Black pairing (or 'ship' in fandom parlance). I ate my fill, drank plenty of beer and Californian Merlot and donned my Auror Tonks costume for the Saturday evening. There's something I've always loved about conventions and being part of a Harry Potter convention specifically just felt very special.
write all of my fanfiction under a pseudonym (as almost everyone does) but to the people at the convention, that's the name they know me by first and foremost. A number of people there knew me solely through my stories, just as I knew people attending through their stories or their art without knowing much else about them. There's something really exciting about meeting people who have enjoyed something you created and make the effort to come up to you and tell you so. As well as that, there's the opportunity to sit with people and talk about creating in fan spaces, negotiating new platforms (such as a Livejournal to Tumblr shift) and the canon itself.
It was a whirlwind of Hogwarts robes and too many extremely interesting papers and panels to go through each one in depth. Fandom doesn't always get things right but I'm consistently impressed by the way fans keep interrogating themselves, their spaces and the things we are fed through literature, film and television.
I thoroughly enjoyed Leviosa and now I'm saving the pennies for the next one.
If you would like to hear any more detail on the content of any of my panels or papers, please let me know.