![]() ![]() A Discovery of Witches introduced Diana Bishop, Oxford scholar and reluctant witch, and the handsome geneticist and vampire Matthew Clairmont together they found themselves at the center of a supernatural battle over an enchanted manuscript known as Ashmole 782. Watch the full video interview with author Deborah Harkness, professor of history at USC, on YouTube. Buy the Book Book TWO of The All Souls Series. So talk about a slow burn, but I got there in the end. In a way, I’ve been researching the book since 1982, when I was in college. So, like most sudden successes, it’s actually been quite a long way in coming. I started A Discovery of Witches in 2008. … are my charges and I’m their guardian, and I’m there to make sure they’re OK. I’m there to be available and occasionally get extremely bossy about a historical detail that everybody thinks is not important. I’m not there to make legislation or make decisions - that’s up to the directors and producers. But really my job is to advise, counsel and warn. I’m sort of like the Queen of England in that I have a great deal of symbolic power because I wrote the books. On working as an executive producer for the television show: In my classroom and in my historical work, I want people to think about the lines we draw between science and magic and religion. We place our faith when we hit a light switch that the light will turn on, in much the same way that someone in the had faith that God was looking over us all and arranged things to His satisfaction. When I think about magic, I think of it as almost a form of faith or worship. One of the things that worries me most as a historian of science is the tendency to see science and religion as antithetical. … For me, it’s all about putting in those little accents that make you feel like you’re really, really there, as opposed to telling something that has a complicated historical arc. I like to describe the exact grain of wood or the exact weave of a textile. I discovered a little bit of history goes a long way. On how being a historian informs her fiction writing: He asked, “How do you know what you think you know?” That was the moment I became a historian. Holyoke College with Harold Garrett Goodyear, and it was a course on magic, knowledge and power in early modern Europe. For me, it was in a class held in the library at Mt. We can often point to the moment where it seemed all the lights in the room got brighter and our minds switched on. I became an Early Modernist as an undergrad. Deborah Harkness on becoming a historian: So what is it like to teach history at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences while also writing stories about witches and vampires? They’re more compatible than you might think, she says. (The show has already been picked up for two more seasons.) ![]() Last year, her stories found an even wider audience with the television debut of A Discovery of Witches, based on the first book of her series. Readers can devour her stories in 37 languages, at last count. Author of the All Souls book trilogy and USC Dornsife professor.Ĭombining magical fantasy with historical intrigue, the best-selling All Souls book trilogy catapulted Deborah Harkness, professor of history at USC, into literary stardom. ![]()
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