Cassie Brummitt is a doctoral researcher and part-time lecturer in the Cinema and Television History (CATH) Research Centre at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. Her PhD thesis examines the brand development of the Harry Potter franchise post-2011 through an examination of its paratexts. In October 2016 her article entitled ÔPottermore: Transmedia Storytelling and Authorship in Harry PotterÕ was published in The Midwest Quarterly.
Although assumptions persist regarding ‘popular culture’ as mass-produced, wholly commercial or vacuous, popular texts and practices are now so deeply embedded in western lifestyles that any supposed distinctions between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture require persistent challenging.