FYS: Banned Books: Reading, Censorship, and the Politics of Knowledge

Catalog description

This seminar examines how and why books become flashpoints in national arguments about morality, identity, and belonging. Centering novels, memoirs, and essays that have faced sustained attempts at removal from classrooms and libraries, we will examine the impulse to censor as a window into cultural values and anxieties. Our goal is to understand not only what gets banned, but what banned books reveal about cultural fears and the possibilities of storytelling.