We are pleased to announce the details of the Ascendio keynote! Join us Saturday, July 14 from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. for an engaging panel discussion, accompanied by a delicious lunch.
Harry Potter has not merely influenced a generation, but fundamentally changed it. In our keynote panel GENERATION POTTER: FIFTEEN YEARS LATER, we will examine and discuss the worldwide phenomenon of Harry Potter and it’s impact on public discourse. How have Harry Potter fans changed publishing, academia, religion, activism? How is “generation Potter” — those who experienced Harry Potter as children and are now media-savvy, Millennial adults — shaping culture? Join panelists Neta Kligler-Vilenchik, Connie Neal, Ben Schrank and Catherine Tosenberger for an engaging discussion from four diverse perspectives.
Tickets for our keynote are $80, in addition to any level of Ascendio registration (other than Merlin’s Circle, with which it is included). To purchase a keynote ticket, jump to our registration portal!
Keynote Speaker Bios
Neta Kligler-Vilenchik is a Doctoral student working with Professor Henry Jenkins on the Media Activism and Participatory Politics (MAPP) project at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. As part of the MAPP project, she is looking at connections between fan communities and youth civic engagement, focusing on members of the Harry Potter Alliance, Imagine Better, and the Nerdfighters. Neta has published work on the Harry Potter Alliance and Invisible Children in the Journal of Transformative Works & Cultures, and is currently working on her Doctoral thesis on alternative citizenship models and their potential for youth civic engagement. She holds an M.A. in Communication from the University of Haifa, Israel.
Connie Neal (www.hogwartsdefender.com) was the first Christian author to publicly challenge negative attacks against Harry Potter by some in the Christian community, defending Harry in the media and enduring the resultant backlash. She is author of What’s a Christian to do with Harry Potter? (2000); The Gospel according to Harry Potter: The Spiritual Journey of the World’s Greatest Seeker (2002, 2008); Wizards, Wardrobes, and Wookiees: Navigating Good and Evil in Harry Potter, Narnia, & Star Wars (2007) along with many other books and Bible projects. Neal’s books, in many languages, are widely cited in other books, doctoral dissertations, scholarly journals, magazines (including Newsweek & Christianity Today), and media worldwide. Her Harry Potter-related books are used in university courses from Pepperdine to Yale. Her latest release is Harry Potter’s Book of Virtues.
Ben Schrank is President and Publisher of Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin (USA). Razorbill’s books include Jay Asher’s #1 New York Times bestselling Thirteen Reasons Why, Richelle Mead’s #1 bestselling Vampire Academy and Bloodlines series, Beth Revis’ New York Times bestselling Across The Universe series, the New York Times Bestseller Marcel the Shell with Shoes on by Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer Camp and the multiple star review winning and entirely revolutionary image-driven novel Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony and Rodrigo Corral. Ben Schrank’s novel, Love is a Canoe, will be published by Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar Straus and Giroux in early 2013. For more about Razorbill, go to www.razorbillbooks.com and for more about Ben Schrank, go to www.benschrank.com
Catherine Tosenberger is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Winnipeg, where she is attached to the Centre for Research in Young People’s Texts and Cultures. Her Ph.D. thesis was on Harry Potter fanfiction on the Internet. She has published on queer Potter fanfiction, Supernatural fanfiction, and fairy tales; her research interests include folk narratives, erotica and pornography, and children’s and adolescent culture and media.
