ENG10270 Banned in the USA

Academic Year 2023/2024

The First Amendment to the United States Bill of Rights allows individuals to speak, publish, read, and watch what they want, effectively forbidding governmental censorship of books, magazines, and newspapers as well as art, film, music, and online materials. Yet, since the 1980s, the American Library Association (ALA) has run Banned Books Week, an annual event which spotlights current and historical attempts to censor books in libraries and schools. The Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom also compiles lists of challenged or banned books that are released annually. Notably, the majority of these are Young Adult (YA) titles.

Through a series of lectures and workshops, this course explores banned books since the turn of the century, asking why these books are banned and by whom. By examining texts such as John Green’s Looking for Alaska and Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, we will also discuss the complicated relationship between prizewinning and banned books, as well as the cultural shift from challenging books to challenging authors. By the end of the course, students will have a greater understanding of the current debates surrounding so-called ‘controversial’ YA fiction in contemporary American culture.