Melissa D. Aaron is an English professor at California Polytechnic State University in Pomona. She teaches a literary and cultural studies course on the Harry Potter series.

George R. Plitnik is an engineering professor at Frostburg State University in Frostburg, Md. He has taught a seminar called “The Science of Harry Potter,” which explores the scientific questions raised by concepts in the series.

Deborah De Rosa, an assistant English professor at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, wrote the chapter “Wizardly Initiations: Moral, Familial, and Social” for Harry Potter’s World: Multidisciplinary Critical Perspectives (Routledge; 2003).

Catherine A. Jack Deavel  is a philosophy professor at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., who has written and spoken on the merits of the Harry Potter series and was a contributor to a Harry Potter and Philosophy.

Elizabeth E. Heilman is an assistant professor of teacher education at Michigan State University and editor of Harry Potter’s World: Multidisciplinary Critical Perspectives (Routledge, 2003).

Philip Nel teaches English at Kansas State University and is the author of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Novels: A Reader’s Guide (Continuum, 2001).

Richard C. Burke is an English professor at Lynchburg College in Virginia and spoke at Nimbus 2003: A Harry Potter Symposium on “Lord Voldemort’s Gift for Spreading Discord & Enmity: The Rise of Evil in Harry Potter.”

Lana A. Whited is professor of English and journalism at Ferrum College in Ferrum, Va., and editor of The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter: Perspectives on a Literary Phenomenon (University of Missouri, 2002). She co-authored a chapter on moral issues.

Peter Appelbaum, an associate professor of education at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pa., wrote the chapter “Magic, Technoculture, and Becoming Human” for Harry Potter’s World: Multidisciplinary Critical Perspectives (Routledge; 2003).