School of Information Sciences

Knox to discuss research on book challenges at NCTE

Emily Knox
Emily Knox, Interim Dean and Professor

Assistant Professor Emily Knox will participate in the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Annual Convention, to be held November 17-20 in Atlanta, Georgia. The convention attracts thousands of authors, advocates, and literacy educators and offers more than 700 concurrent sessions.

Knox will serve as a panelist for the session, "How Teachers, Parents, and Communities Can Keep Students Reading." The panel will address the question of how teachers can keep students reading in the face of censorship challenges to books they have assigned or recommended.  Through its theme, "Faces of Advocacy," the convention will explore the role of educators as advocates for their students, communities, and profession.

"I'll be discussing my research on why people challenge books and the final project that my students complete in my class, in which they create a portfolio responding to a challenge scenario," Knox said.

Knox joined the iSchool faculty in 2012. Her research interests include intellectual freedom and censorship, the intersection of print culture and reading practices, and information ethics and policy. Her book, Book Banning in 21st-Century America, which addresses challenges to materials in public libraries and schools, was published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2015. In 2016 she was elected to the Board of Directors of the National Coalition Against Censorship.

Knox received her PhD from the doctoral program at the Rutgers University School of Communication and Information, and she earned her master's in library and information science from the iSchool at Illinois. She also holds a BA in religious studies from Smith College and an AM in the same field from The University of Chicago Divinity School.

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