BOOK BANNING IN 21ST CENTURY AMERICA by Emily Knox
Emily Knox ’98 is an established scholar in the field of censorship and intellectual freedom, and she literally wrote the book on book banning! Knox examines the reading practices of those who challenge and seek to ban books.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Requests for the removal, relocation, and restriction of books—also known as challenges—occur with some frequency in the United States. Book Banning in 21st-Century American Libraries, based on thirteen contemporary book challenge cases in schools and public libraries across the United States argues that understanding contemporary reading practices, especially interpretive strategies, is vital to understanding why people attempt to censor books in schools and public libraries.
Previous research on censorship tends to focus on legal frameworks centered on Supreme Court cases, historical case studies, and bibliographies of texts that are targeted for removal or relocation and is often concerned with how censorship occurs. The current project, on the other hand, is focused on the why of censorship and posits that many censorship behaviors and practices, such as challenging books, are intimately tied to the how one understands the practice of reading and its effects on character development and behavior. It discusses reading as a social practice that has changed over time and encompasses different physical modalities and interpretive strategies. In order to understand why people challenge books, it presents a model of how the practice of reading is understood by challengers including “what it means” to read a text, and especially how one constructs the idea of “appropriate” reading materials.
PRAISE FOR BOOK BURNING IN 21ST CENTURY AMERICA
Emily Knox’s book will prove to be important for those striving to understand challengers of books in school and public libraries. By taking their words seriously and situating them in useful theoretical frameworks, she provides a handle by which to grasp their world views. Knox’s work adds not only to the scholarship on reading but also to the professional toolkit of librarians. (Louise S. Robbins, Professor Emerita, School of Library and Information Studies University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Emily Knox has already gained a national reputation for her expertise in this area of scholarship. This book will be a crucial addition to our knowledge of how censorship “works” in this century. (Barbara M. Jones, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom)
Requests for the removal, relocation, and restriction of books—also known as challenges—occur with some frequency in the United States. Book Banning in 21st Century America, based on thirteen contemporary book challenge cases in schools and public libraries across the United States argues that understanding contemporary reading practices, especially interpretive strategies, is vital to understanding why people attempt to censor books in schools and public libraries.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Emily Knox is an assistant professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include information access, intellectual freedom and censorship, information ethics, information policy, and the intersection of print culture and reading practices. She recently edited Trigger Warnings: History, Theory, Context, published by Rowman & Littlefield in June 2017.
