A character analysis of Gollum could determine whether a Turkish doctor goes to jail. This after he tweeted images of the Turkish president that resembled the film’s depiction of Gollum.
Tag Archives: censorship
Criminal Case: Turkish Prez & Gollum
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Gollum, Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, power corrupts, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey, Turkish president Comments closed
Why It’s Good To Offend Students
An entering Duke student has refused to read Alison Bechdel’s “Fun House.” A professor comes partially to his defense.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Burning of the Books", Alison Bechdel, Bertolt Brecht, college life, Franz Kafka, freshman orientation, Fun House, homosexuality, reader response Comments closed
Warning Labels for the Classics
Suggestions that certain classics come with “trigger warnings” leads of the following reflection.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Geoffrey Chaucer, Homer, Iliad, Importance of Being Earnest, John Milton, Oscar Wilde, Paradise Lost, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Wife of Bath Comments closed
Parents, Kids, Schools & Banned Books
Parents pressure schools to ban books because they want to protect their children. Their children want the books because they have a different set of needs.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged adolescence, Are You There God It's Me Margaret, Book banning, Catcher in the Rye, Education, Harry Potter, J. D. Salinger, J. K. Rowling, Judy Blume, Perks of Being a Wall Flower, Stephen Chbotsky Comments closed
When Werther-Fever Upended Europe
Goethe’s “Sorrows of Young Werther” created a sensation in 1774, with a young cult following and older attackers.
Schools Cowed by the Religious Right
Holly Blumner had a vision. A member of the St. Mary’s theater department, Holly wanted to stage Susan Zeder’s Mother Hicks, a adolescent girl’s identity quest, and then take it into area schools. This post is the story about how rightwing groups have so terrified our schools that the vision died.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged adolescence, Huck Finn, Mark Twain, Mother Hicks, Song of Solomon, Susan Zeder, Toni Morrison Comments closed
Damn the N-Word, Full Speed Ahead
Writing about interracial friendships in yesterday’s post brings to mind the most famous interracial friendship in literature, that between Huck and Jim. The novel is once again in the news (is it ever out of it?) with a new edition of the novel where the n-word is changed to “slave.” The edition is the brainchild […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, racism, teaching literature Comments closed
The Burning of the Books
In Ben Click’s post yesterday on the banning history of Huckleberry Finn, he tells the story of a man who remembers hearing the book read to him when he was a child in a concentration camp. Horst Kruse never forgot that reading experience and would go on to become a Twain scholar. Ben talks about […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Banning of the Books", Bertolt Brecht, book burning, Nazis Comments closed
Huck Finn’s Censorship History
I have always been fascinated by the many ways that literature influences our lives, but, as a literary scholar, I also know that influence is a very hard thing to prove. That’s why I find censorship to be interesting. When people censor a book, they do so because they assume that it can have an […]
