Book banning is a practice of censorship that involves removing a book from the public consumption, either before it can be published, or after it has been published, by taking it off the shelves of libraries and bookshops. In the United States (U.S.), book banning currently takes place at the local level, in local libraries and schools. However, in the 1940s and 1950s national enforcement was used to keep communist ideas out of the country, and even now homosexual material is still at risk of being labeled pornographic and seized at the border.
In other countries the censorship may take place at a national level to regulate the circulation of images, ideas, or the works of a specific author. For example, in Turkey, following the comments made by novelist Orhan Pamuk concerning the killing of Armenians and Kurds in Turkey, a new law was established that prohibits public statements and publications that defame Turkishness and Turkish institutions. In the Soviet Union art and literature,...
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Suggested Reading
Agee, J. (1999). “There it was, that one sex scene”: English teachers on censorship. English Journal, 89(2), 61–69.
Foerstel, H. N. (1994). Banned in the U.S.A.: A reference guide to book censorship in schools and public libraries. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Staples, S. F. (1996). What Johnny can’t read: Censorship in American libraries. The ALAN Rev 23(2), http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/winter96/pubCONN.html.
Suggested Resources
The American Library Association—http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bbwlinks/explorebbw.htm,http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/aboutoif/aboutofficeintellectual.htm: The Banned Books Week Materials, as well as the Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association, provide statistics, lists of banned materials, and suggestions for responding to challenges to library and school curriculum materials.
National Coalition against Censorship—http://www.ncac.org: This website provides many resources about censorship battles occurring in different arenas, including education.
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Linville, D. (2010). Book Banning. In: Clauss-Ehlers, C.S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-71799-9_49
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