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Research + Analysis

Professionalism + Leadership at Every Level

Obscenity, Authoritarianism, and Blasphemy: The Global Context of Book Banning

Monday, July 22, 2024

3:30pm – 4:30pm CDT

Room: Regency Ballroom D (West Tower Gold Level)

Moderator/Coordinator(s)

Sarah E.M Martin (she/her/they/them)

Librarian, Global Law & Language Access
Los Angeles County Law Library
Los Angeles, California, United States

Slides (PDF) Handouts

Speaker(s)

Emily J.M Knox (she/her/hers)

Associate Professor
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign School of Information Sciences
Champaign, Illinois, United States
LM

Louis Myers, II

Senior Legal Reference Librarian
Law Library of Congress
Andrew Zalot

Doctoral Candidate
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign School of Information Sciences

Wordly Closed Captioning: https://attend.wordly.ai/join/FVTJ-3294

Recent years have seen a growing wave of book bans, primarily targeting books with LGBTQI, anti-racist, and other social justice themes. This program puts the current wave of U.S. book bans in broader context by describing the law and history of book banning globally. Participants will learn how countries around the world have banned books for reasons ranging from obscenity to sedition and blasphemy, as well as how librarians, activists, and other defenders of freedom of information have pushed back.

Target Audience:

Librarians at public and academic law libraries facing requests to ban or censor books. Law firm librarians at firms representing libraries or authors that have been targets of book banning. Librarians at law schools whose faculty have been targeted for writing about LGBTQI, anti-racist, or other social justice issues. Any librarian interested in promoting freedom of information in the U.S. and globally.

Learning Objectives:

Participants will be able to compare the legal frameworks and motivations for censorship across different countries and times.
Participants will be able to understand and enumerate commonly given reasons for censoring books; identify the entities that have instigated, implemented, and enforced book censorship throughout history and today; and use that information and insight to better support and educate their own communities.
Participants will be able to describe strategies for combatting book banning and censorship.