FERRUM, VA, October 30, 2026 — For most college professors, Halloween brings a recreational distraction from their scholarly work. For Ferrum College’s Professor of English Lana Whited, Halloween is at the heart of a focal area in her scholarship and teaching. She and alumna Jamie Gilbert ‘20 were invited to participate in several recent media stories about author J. K. Rowling and the Harry Potter series.
Whited and Gilbert were both interviewed for an article by Kaitlin Reilly in Y!Entertainment in September, titled “Can fans separate ‘Harry Potter’ from J. K. Rowling? For some, the answer is no.” Both gave thoughtful responses to questions about one of the most difficult questions that face fans of literature and other arts whose makers reveal personal views or actions that become highly controversial.
Gilbert, who teaches drama at O. T. Bonner Middle School in Danville, Virginia, was an avid fan of the Harry Potter book series and adaptations since she was a child. After the first four Harry Potter books were published in the 1990s, quickly becoming some of the bestselling books in history, Whited edited the first book of scholarly essays about the series, The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter, published by University of Missouri Press in 2002. Her extensive research, publishing, and presentations on the series since then have influenced her teaching as well. She developed a week-long course about Harry’s magical boarding school, Hogwarts, for middle-school-aged children attending a summer enrichment camp at Ferrum College. As a Ferrum College student Gilbert took Whited’s literature course linking the series with fantasy and mythology throughout world history, Harry Potter and the Hero Myth. As the photographs show, both Gilbert and Whited wear Hogwarts school robes on special occasions such as the Ferrum Park Halloween Trail where Whited is handing out candy in her photo.
Reilly ended her article with Whited’s view of the apparent disconnect between Rowling’s most controversial personal views, which became public in 2017, and values embedded in her books. “I think she taught us anti-prejudice herself,” Whited told Reilly. “The primary theme of the Harry Potter series is the importance of condemning an agenda… based on the notion that some people are better than others because of an aspect of their identity, of their blood status. She taught us this herself.”
Whited was also featured in a podcast that aired on October 12, interviewed by Katy McDaniel and Emily Strand, hosts of the Potterversity podcast, a MuggleNet production. Their discussion focused on the significance of Halloween in the Harry Potter series. They observed that an October 31 event in the background of the book series, hundreds of years before Harry’s time, provides the key to dates in the novels such as Harry’s birthday and the years he attends Hogwarts. Much of Whited’s research involves links between the fantasy novels and real historical events, especially race relations in world history and in the fictional series’ fantastical relationships among humans (called Muggles), wizards and witches, and so-called Half-Bloods.
Another interview request came to Whited from Sukanya Datta at the Hindustani Times in Mumbai. She was working on a feature about the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Harry Potter film franchise. The article has not yet appeared on the Hindustani Times website. These media stories have been appearing in anticipation of the HBO streaming service’s new series based on the Harry Potter books.
