Book Banning in 21st Century America, by Assistant Professor Emily Knox, has been selected by international LIS honor society Beta Phi Mu and publisher Rowman & Littlefield to be the first in the new Beta Phi Mu Scholars Series. Book Banning is the result of Knox’s research of the motivations of book challenges. It explores common themes in arguments for censorship and analyzes the role of reading and community power in book challenges. Works selected for the series must be innovative pieces that support the society’s commitments to scholarship, leadership, and service, and spark discourse and action among readers. The book will be available from Rowman & Littlefield Publishers on January 16.
Knox also published on the topic of book banning in an October 2014 Library & Information Science Research article titled, “Society, institutions, and common sense: Themes in the discourse of book challengers in 21st century United States.” The article focuses on thirteen public library and school challenge cases and uses a variety of documents, public hearing records, and interviews with challengers to extract common themes in the worldviews of challengers.