Terminus - Harry Potter Conference

Vetting Boards

Terminus received a wide variety of programming proposals in many fields. These proposals addressed the diversity of study about Harry Potter as literature, art, a teaching tool, a cultural phenomenon, a springboard for creativity, and various other areas of scholarship. To facilitate the selection, Terminus depended on the decisions of several independent review boards, whose members evaluated presentations based on their relevance, representation of the widest possible variety of topics, and quality of scholarship. The review boards, in turn, represented the various areas in which Terminus received the majority of its submissions; thus, each proposal was evaluated by those most qualified to do so.

We are grateful to the board members listed below for lending their expertise to Terminus. If you have any questions about programming or the selection process for programming proposals, please write to programming@terminus2008.org.

Academic Peer Review Board - | - Creative Review Board - | - Fandom Review Board - | - Professional Review Board

The Academic Peer Review Board examines proposals that are presented as scholarly studies and reviews these proposals for current theory and quality of scholarship.

Sharon K. Goetz is the academic programming coordinator for Terminus. She works at a print-and-digital editing project as an associate editor and project manager. She has also written software manuals, taught college writing courses oriented around speculative fiction and King Arthur, and completed a Ph.D. investigating medieval English chronicles amidst their manuscript contexts. Sharon's event-planning experience includes coordinating Phoenix Rising's academic programming and compendium and serving as Programming Secretary for The Witching Hour; in 2002 she chaired the Medieval Performativity conference that celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the UC Berkeley Beowulf Marathon. Sharon has lurked happily in the Harry Potter fandom since 2003.

Skyler Hijazi has a master’s degree in Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona. His thesis, Bodily Spectacles, Queer Re-Visions: The Narrative Lives of Harry Potter Slash Online, explores the issues of collective memory, queer reading, trauma, and embodiment which become salient in fan-produced texts in the Harry Potter fandom.

Martha Hixon is an associate professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University, where she teaches courses in children's literature and folktales and literature. Her research interests are fantasy literature and contemporary revisions of folk and fairy tales. She also is a co-director of the Biennial Modern Critical Approaches to Children's Literature conference and an active member of the Children's Literature Association.

Hilary K. Justice, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English at Illinois State University and a Senior Admin for the On-line Wizarding Library fan-fiction archive. Her academic work includes The Bones of the Others, a book-length study of the creative process, and she has won several awards for her fan-fiction, most recently a Quill-to-Parchment award for A Walking Shadow, a novel-length alternate Book 7. When not teaching or writing, she enjoys chamber music and reading knitting patterns.

Suzanne Scott is a doctoral student in Critical Studies at the University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television. In addition to presenting works on fan cultures and cult media at various conferences and working as a staff writer for the New York-based film magazine Reverse Shot, Suzanne is preparing to begin work on her dissertation, a study of the convergence between new media and fan narratives, focusing exclusively on Harry Potter fandom and multimedia texts. She recently completed a chapter for the upcoming collection Cylons in America, on the potential effects of the Battlestar Galactica webisodes and podcasts on fan production, and was the Chair of Programming for Phoenix Rising.

Gwen Tarbox, an associate professor of English at Western Michigan University, specializes in youth culture, women's literature, and literary modernism. Her publications include The Clubwomen's Daughters: Collectivist Impulses in Progressive-era Girls' Fiction, a forthcoming book entitled Feminist Dialogues in Contemporary Girls' Fiction, and a number of articles on adolescent literature. An ardent fan of both literary and pop culture approaches to the Harry Potter phenomenon, Gwen teaches a course that brings the two perspectives together.

Catherine Tosenberger has a Ph.D. in children's literature and folklore from the University of Florida. Her dissertation, "Potterotics: Harry Potter Fanfiction on the World Wide Web," under the direction of Dr. Kenneth Kidd, is an in-depth study of Potter fanfic and fandom from both literary and ethnographic perspectives. She has presented papers on fan cultures, folklore, and adolescent literature at a number of conferences, and is a contributor to the National Public Radio program Recess! Catherine is a longtime member of the Harry Potter fandom, and will read anything that involves Weasleys.

Academic Peer Review Board - | - Creative Review Board - | - Fandom Review Board - | - Professional Review Board

The Creative Review Board receives submissions that address craft and scholarship specific to writing and the visual and performing arts, as well as those that examine the creative process.

Glockgal loves fanart and has been illustrating for almost ten years. She's jumped between various fandoms but still sticks with Harry Potter due to the great canon, entertaining fandom and especially the fantastic fanart community. She's finally doing something professional about her love for art and getting an education in video game art and design. Her fanart website can be found at twinners.org.

Marjorie Cohee Manifold is an assistant professor of Art Education at Indiana University. Her research has focused on learning through aesthetic experiences. She explores aesthetic learning among youth who engage in online (global) fandom communities of popular culture, such as Harry Potter; anime, manga, and comics; and role-playing games. Her publications have appeared as book chapters and in national and international journals. She has given presentations at state, regional, national and international levels and is active in several professional art educational organizations, including the National Art Education Association (NAEA), the United States and the International Society for Education Through the Arts (USSEA/InSEA).

Jennifer Ofenstein is a native Texan who has been crafting since she was old enough to thread a needle. She received her B.A. in English/Art from Sul Ross State University in 1995. After reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone to her kids in 1999, she became involved in crafting all things Harry. Years later, she is a moderator for the Harry Potter Crafts Yahoo! Group and Crafts Gallery Manager for The Leaky Cauldron (leakynews.com). She maintains her own craft website (sewhooked.org) and volunteers for a blanket-making charity, The Linus Connection, as a blanketeer, former board member and webmistress. She's currently working on her first quilting book, based on her Harry Potter designs, many of which were featured in the quilt "My Magical Lens," which made its debut appearance at Phoenix Rising in May 2007. Jennifer is happily married with two kids and lives in Austin, Texas.

Brian Ross is one-half of the wizard rock band Draco and the Malfoys with Bradley Mehlenbacher. The band has been featured on MTV, MuchMusic, abcnews.com, National Public Radio and dozens of local television and radio broadcasts. They have played in more than 100 cities in 30 states, performing songs such as “My Dad is Rich” and “Potter Stinks!”

Tarie, a Drama Queen since before she’d even left the womb, has worked professionally in myriad theatres across the country, including the prestigious Folger Theatre and Rep Stage. She holds a master’s degree in Costume Design from a Texas university and is the costumer and an adjunct professor at a private university in Pennsylvania. In addition to designing, patterning, and building costumes, Tarie has performed various other theatrical duties both onstage and off. In her “spare” time, Tarie is a seventh-grade English teacher and hasn’t managed to go completely round the twist just yet.

Academic Peer Review Board - | - Creative Review Board - | - Fandom Review Board - | - Professional Review Board

The Fandom Review Board receives submissions that address fan perspectives, and is charged with selecting proposals that represent current trends and issues across the diversity of the on- and off-line fan community.

Sarah Benoot is a member of species cubicus dwellerus in Arizona. Her current position allows little usage of her A.A.S. in Video Production from the Art Institute of Phoenix, but she practices constant vigilance for that script-writing, lighting, or editing emergency that is sure to come up any time now. Her wide-ranging fandom activities include serving as a Coder Elf for FictionAlley's Fic Intake Team, Assistant Chair of Formal Programming for The Witching Hour, Exploratory Programming Coordinator for Phoenix Rising, and just being amazed and impressed by the stories and art she sees produced every day.

Kirstee Byrne (kaymbee) first read Harry Potter in 2001, in a desperate attempt to escape her sister on a family road trip. She was hooked after one chapter and, upon arriving home, immediately searched for like-minded fans on her brand-new Internet connection. To her delight, she found fanfiction, wrote and posted her first story, received her first review and hasn't looked back since. Kirstee currently writes on LiveJournal; she moderates a community based on the Dean Thomas/Luna Lovegood ship, as well as one based on the members of Dumbledore's Army. She was a general volunteer at Nimbus—2003, headed the Information Desk and acted as Minister of Magic at The Witching Hour, and was Chair of Communications at Phoenix Rising. She dabbles in fandoms such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Veronica Mars and Lord of the Rings, but her first love will always be Harry Potter.

Hilary K. Justice (Ariadne), Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English at Illinois State University and a Senior Admin for the On-line Wizarding Library fan-fiction archive. Her academic work includes The Bones of the Others, a book-length study of the creative process, and she has won several awards for her fan-fiction, most recently a Quill-to-Parchment award for A Walking Shadow, a novel-length alternate Book 7. When not teaching or writing, she enjoys chamber music and reading knitting patterns.

LeelaStarsky is a full-time mother of four and freelance illustrator. She is a qualified Graphic Reproductionist and earned a Diploma of Illustration in 2003. She considers herself a well-rounded geek/fangirl: fannish stuff has been her love and obsession for as long as she can remember and spans many fandoms—primarily Harry Potter and Star Wars, but also Dr Who, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, and many others. She has been drawing fanart and writing fanfic since she was twelve, and doesn't think she's going to stop any time soon.

Annamaria Lombino (Titti) is an immigration lawyer who spends a lot of her free time in fandom. She joined the Harry Potter fandom back in 2001 and helped to create Ink Stained Fingers, a slash archive. She is the webmistress for Thin Line (the Snape/Black archive) and the Snape/Weasleys archive. Both sites are part of the Snape Slash Fleet. Since joining fandom, she has written over 100 slash stories with Snape or Draco Malfoy as the main character. She is also an editor for LiveJournal’s Daily Snitch newsletter.

McKay earned a bachelor of arts degree after double-majoring in English and History and a master's degree in English Literature, and she has presented papers at such professional conferences as the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. Currently, she teaches composition and literature at the university level. McKay has been an active member of fandom since the early 1980s, of the online fandom since 1997, and of the Harry Potter fandom since 2001. She helped found the Snape Slash Fleet and was one of the original editors of the Daily Snitch newsletter. These days, she is most active in the Snape/Lupin ship, editing the Snupin Prophet newsletter and running the Pervy Werewolf community.

Xander is most of the way towards earning a bachelor of arts degree in Classical Studies and Modern Languages from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He first read the Harry Potter books in 1999 and became a full-fledged member of the fandom in 2001. In his free time, aside from carrying out general fannish activities, he serves in a variety of capacities at FictionAlley; he is also an editor for the Quibbler Report and Hogwarts Today newsletters on LiveJournal.

Academic Peer Review Board - | - Creative Review Board - | - Fandom Review Board - | - Professional Review Board

The Professional Review Board selects proposals in specialized areas, such as education, library studies, business, law, and other fields and professional development areas.

Melissa Anelli is a newspaper journalist in NYC who runs The Leaky Cauldron, a Webby Award-winning Harry Potter news and community site. She has reported on Harry Potter since 2001, and by doing so has interviewed J. K. Rowling, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Matthew Lewis, Evanna Lynch, HP editor Arthur Levine, and many more within the franchise. She also hosts PotterCast, The Leaky Cauldron’s Harry Potter podcast, which won the 2006 Podcast Award for Best Entertainment.

J. Carson practices intellectual property and business law in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She obtained significant experience in licensing, technology and online business issues during her time in private practice and has since moved in-house at a major retail corporation, primarily advising the executive team on issues related to the company’s e-commerce website. She has presented numerous times on issues ranging from internet service provider liability to website jurisdiction, and enjoys the variety and challenge that legal issues relating to online sales provide.

Paula Christensen is an associate professor at Northwestern State University of Louisiana in Natchitoches. She teaches graduate courses at NSU in both gifted education and counseling. She is a National Certified Counselor with a strong background in counseling with gifted children and adults and teaching middle school gifted students. Paula has also engaged in research studies regarding the processes of gifted students reaching their potential. Her passion for the Harry Potter novels and for gifted students has led to a wonderful blending of studying both.

The Reverend Rebecca Clark is a licensed and commissioned pastor in the United Methodist Church. She graduated with a B.A. from Elmira College, where she majored in Philosophy and Religion and minored in English Literature; she went on to earn a Master of Divinity from Boston University School of Theology, graduating valedictorian. Becca has been serving as a pastor for three years in a small church outside of Albany, NY, where she lives with her husband and daughter. In all the spare intellectual time afforded a full-time pastor and mom of a toddler, Becca enjoys exploring theological themes in popular culture, and seeking ways to highlight spirituality's relevance in everyday life. She also stubbornly ships Remus/Sirius.

Jennie A. Levine, also known as Zsenya, has been a member of the Harry Potter fan community since 2000. In January 2001, she co-founded The Sugar Quill, a Harry Potter fan site dedicated to the improvement of creative writing using fanfiction as a jumping-off point. The Sugar Quill also hosts discussion forums, and it has grown from a small site with five volunteers to a site hosting over 900 fanfiction authors, over 50 volunteers, and over 8,000 registered members. Jennie holds a master's degree in Library Science and works as an archivist. She would love to have a talk with Madam Pince about her customer service skills, although she thinks Madam Pince is justified in banning food from the library.

Richard is 25, lives in London, and works in a think tank. He read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Oxford University and has been in the Harry Potter fandom since 2001. In addition to serving on the fandom review boards for The Witching Hour and Phoenix Rising, he gave a presentation on Goblin Economics at the latter.

Academic Peer Review Board - | - Creative Review Board - | - Fandom Review Board - | - Professional Review Board