Dangerous Words: Book Bans, Censorship and Disinformation in a Digital World
What I'm teaching this Spring
When I was 17 and graduating high school, I didn’t win any superlatives. I wasn’t popular (you knew who the popular girls were, and I wasn’t one of them), but I was well liked and had a close circle of friends, some of whom I still talk to today.
At my school’s yearly Toga party,1 while a bunch of high schoolers festooned in haphazard togas made from white bed linens cavorted around to “Get Low” by Lil Jon,2 the yearbook advisor approached me.
“I want you to know,” she said leaning in close, because the music was so damn loud, “you received the second most votes for ‘Most Likely To Become a Teacher.’”
Teacher? I thought. Teaching? That’s an odd one. I thanked her, and the rest of my toga party night fades into black, because nothing else of note happened.3 That moment is what endures. I already knew I wanted to be a writer,4 but of all the other things I saw myself as being, a teacher was not one of them.
Well the joke’s on me because what do I do now? I tutor and I teach. Mostly adults - I am not great with children, and I am so very thankful for the people who do teach young kids because you are the salt of the earth. *tip of the hat*
The road here was - like most things in my life - a chaotic one. After majoring in Political Science and French, and with a heavy background in Math, Econ and History, I started working for a software company. I started out in customer service, in the milk-and-honey land of Los Angeles, but eventually made my way to training. Why? No one on my team wanted to do it. And I had no problem being in front of a group of people. As you’ve probably noticed by now, I like to talk. Whether it's in front of 20 people or not makes no difference to me.
I’ll skip over the next 10 years or so, but I was a software trainer and then Instructional Designer in the Tech space before I got laid off. So I was a teacher, just not in the way that I (or most people, I think) conceive of as ‘teachers.’
And, I had an MFA.
Why does that matter? An MFA is one of the few (if not only) Master’s degrees that is considered a terminal degree, allowing you to teach at the collegiate level without a PhD.5 I got my MFA for the writing reasons, but the fact that I could teach with it was also a perk.6
Teaching and organizing content is a skill, one that until you’ve had to do, seems rather easy. But there is nothing worse than eyes glazing over in front of you in real time when you’re trying to explain an important concept. So in this early New Year liminal space, I’m putting on my teaching cap and planning out syllabi for the upcoming semester.
I know I’ve threatened my syllabi in previous posts, but I wanted to talk about one in particular today: my UNVS course at Salve Regina. It’s a First Year Writing Seminar, and I got to choose the topic. What does a writer with an inherently broad educational background decide to teach on? Dangerous Words, of course.
The thought process went like this: in my interview for said teaching gig, I was asked on the spot (and my now boss admitted as much) if I had to design a course, what topic would I pick? She mentioned through the cackle of Zoom speakers that most instructors teach something they’re interested in.
After a few moments of hemming and hawing, and realizing that France certainly wouldn’t do, I came up with Dangerous Words. The word smithing of the title came later, but the real time logic was:
Oh, I read a book a few years ago about how Doctor Zhivago was forbidden to be published in the USSR, and how the CIA ran an operation at one of the World’s Fairs to distribute the book to undermine Communism.7 (The fiction book in question is The Secrets We Kept.)
Maybe I could focus on that, how books are forbidden by governments. Or maybe use Boris Pasternak and Doctor Zhivago as a case study.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to talk about censorship and books? That’s a contemporary problem with book bans. There’s certainly a lot of historical precedent for students to research, what with the Nazis burning books and all.
Well, if we’re going to talk about Censorship, then we have to talk about disinformation. We already know that there was a Russian disinformation campaign in the 2016 election, so putting this all together you get -
My new job.
I am still building out the particulars of my syllabus, but I do know what books I will teach. The great (or terrible) thing about this topic is that there is so. much. material. Truly, I have reference document full of additional readings that I will be giving to my students. As one of my reference books states, “Books have been banned for as long as people have been writing things down.”8 Ahead, I give you the texts I’ll be using in class come Spring Semester. If Dangerous Words are of any interest to you, I recommend picking up one (or more) of these.
Stifled Laughter: One Woman’s Story About Fighting Censorship
Unless otherwise noted, all pictures are from Bookshop.org. When I began researching books to teach, Stifled Laughter came up. Oh, I thought. This is perfect! A memoir about a woman fighting book bans in Florida, so relatable! I somehow believed that this was about recent events, and oh no, dear reader. This is about Claudia Johnson’s fight against book bans in Florida in the 80s. THE EIGHTIES. I immediately began to despair for humanity. A college professor, Johnson got involved in protesting book bans when she learned that Lysistrata and “The Miller’s Tale” from The Canterbury Tales would be banned from a senior high school English class. In a textbook that had already been approved by the state, no less. From there, Johnson’s fight takes her all the way to the Supreme Court. There’s a lot to like about this book: it’s short, it’s a memoir, and about a real political phenomenon that we are still seeing in the 21st Century. Part of the goal of this course is to expose students to various types of writing, and I think memoir is overlooked at the collegiate level. Outside of English classes, at least. This book is a powerful reminder that even as an individual citizen, you have power, and that your story matters.
Libricide: The Regime Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century
I was so excited for this book. Talking about regime sponsored book bans and destruction? My little Political Scientist heart was singing. And it is a good book - particularly the Introduction is masterful at laying out the argument and which case studies were chosen and why. However, however. It is *very* academic. So many theories, so much academic jargon, the type of book my professors warned me against writing. As in, Just because you have to write an academic paper doesn’t mean that it has to be illegible for the rest of us. I’m only going to teach the first few chapters, including the case study on Nazi Germany, and maybe have students do a summary of one of the remaining case studies. What I also find interesting about this book is that it came out in 2003, so while some of the information is still current, it begs the question of what has changed in the past 20 years and whether this needs a second edition.
The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread
I intend to teach The Misinformation Age either in parallel or right after Libricide. This is a much easier non-fiction book to read, but no less academic. It’s filled with footnotes (yay!) and looks at how groups of people can come to believe patently false things. I’m hoping to have my students compare the styles of these two books, and study what works better for them. One of the capstones of this course is they need to write a research paper, so I figured the middle of our course would include lots of examples of written research while they do their own. Ultimately, I don’t know what these students intend to major in, so I want to make sure they are exposed to quality academic writing as well.
As I mentioned in a previous weekly roundup, I hadn’t read Brave New World before. I have since finished it, and oh boy was it a wild ride. There are some points where I can tell that this book is a product of its time, (especially the usage of ‘Savage Reservation’) but my god, how much of this book is still relevant nearly 100 years later is scary. Why am I saving this for last? I can pretty much guarantee that my incoming students will have done *some* literary analysis in high school, and I’m not going to ask them to write a big paper on this. I’d rather them finish with something that they are already familiar with, especially after the research paper. Further, I think everyone automatically thinks of 1984 when they think of a dystopian novel (which, fair enough) and I’d rather have them read something they may not have been exposed to already.
I’m not so much as saving They Say / I Say for last so much as I will be using it as a companion text throughout the semester. In high school, I had to take an intense writing workshop. In retrospect, it was great preparation for being an English major, but once I decided to be a political scientist, I had to relearn how to write. This book covers how to analyze the written word and write in a variety of academic styles - literature analysis, scientific debate, academic papers, you’ve got it. There are useful templates and exercises in here, so my plan is to use this as a companion piece to the larger writing projects they’ll have. Because if there is anything I’ve learned in my past few years of teaching, is how many people have never written a research paper.
That’s it! Along with countless other articles, of course.
Honorable mentions are: V for Vendetta, The Book Thief, and Fahrenheit 451. What about you? Have you had any personal experience with book bans? And would you want to see my extensive reference document on other books related to Dangerous Words? Let me know in the comments!
Yes, you read that right. It was hosted by one of the upperclassmen girl dorms. *jazz hands* Boarding school!
Second to only “Yeah” by Usher as the song of choice at high school dances in the 2000s. Which also features Lil Jon. Lil Jon had a real chokehold on the culture back then.
Also now that I’m thinking about it, one of the trustees of my high school was in Animal House so that’s probably where the toga party came from.
That villain origin story started at age 9.
And thank gods because I am NOT going back for one of those.
The Internet says that MBAs, MArchs, MLSs, and MSWs are also considered Terminal Degrees. The more you know.
https://www.coursera.org/articles/terminal-degree
This is completely true, by the way.
Another footnote doing its job!
Banned Books. Dorling Kindersley, 2022.
more additions to my TBR -- thank you!!
I taught a first-year writing course loosely based around book banning. The two novels that I taught were Madame Bovary (Flaubert) and The Bluest Eye (Morrison). I also assigned pieces of historical commentary. For example, in the 1850s, Flaubert was brought to trial because his book was considered pro-adultery and immoral, and the book was threatened. Those trial records still exist, so we read arguments for and against the banning of the book given in mid-19th-century France. Similarly, Morrison's text in particular has been banned from curricula and school libraries because of accusations that it's pornographic. So we read manuscripts from school board meetings with parents and students both explaining why they thought the book was important and why it should or shouldn't be banned. Class discussions focused on whether banning should ever be possible, under what circumstances, what novels and art are good for, etc. It was a great class! I find that students really hook into the topic. Good luck with your course.