An exploration about how characters in the Harry Potter handle fame “Harry Potter and the Cult of Celebrity” will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Booth Library’s Witters Conference Room 4440.

Lola Burnham, a journalism professor, interim director of Student Publications and editorial adviser to The Daily Eastern News, will be presenting the talk.

As Gilderoy Lockhart tells Harry Potter when cautioning him about seeking too much attention, “Celebrity is as celebrity does.”

The talk will examine whether characters in the Harry Potter series seek fame or avoid it. It will also look at how they handle fame when it comes their way and what this reveals about their character.

According to Booth Library’s website this program will explore questions including, “What do Harry, Ron, Hermione, Viktor Krum and others have to teach us about fame?” and “What can we learn from the infamous Gilderoy Lockhart and Rita Skeeter?” as well as what Dumbledore had to say about the perils of fame for “The Boy Who Lived.”

According to the library’s website, one of Burnham’s research areas is media ethics, and she enjoys using the Harry Potter books to connect to her research topics. She has many fond memories of taking her children to Harry Potter book release parties. She is also still wondering why her letter from Hogwarts never arrived and suspects that nargles are to blame.

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