PWR 1CWA: Ban that Book! Rhetorics of Free Speech and Censorship

Calling all book lovers! Welcome to your First-Year Writing and Rhetoric Seminar. This is a foundational course in college-level reading, writing, and rhetorical argumentation. Rather than a content course, we use "book banning" and literary censorship as an intellectual laboratory for learning the mechanics of academic literacy.

This class examines contemporary literary censorship in the United States as a form of political rhetoric: a set of arguments, appeals, and practices through which different stakeholders try to shape what gets read, and by whom. We'll study censorship as it moves through multiple channels — legislative mandates, school board policy, library restriction lists, publisher risk-management decisions, and public campaigns for and against particular books — and use rhetorical theory to analyze how stakeholders build their case. Students will learn to identify audiences, appeals, and underlying values in this debate, and to construct their own evidence-based arguments about it.

Examples of Research Topics

Students explore the rhetoric and motives of contemporary American literary censorship. Projects might focus on the stakes of top-down legislative bans of specific books and authors, bottom-up activist and tech-oriented calls to deplatform authors, or market logics and publishing industry practices that control access to which stories and authors make it press. Along the way, students will consider: Why, for example, are certain types of books, authors, and topics banned more than others? What political or social pressures give rise to banning books and controlling speech and where do our largest threats of literary censorship come from in contemporary American society?

Major Assignments

Rhetorical Analysis

(1200-1500 words; 4-5 pages) Students analyze how a text mobilizes specific rhetorical strategies to frame a particular stance toward literary censorship and book bans.

Texts in Conversation

(1800-2400 words; 6-8 pages) Students enter a conversation between 5–7 secondary sources (scholarly, legal, activist, journalistic) focused on a specific approach to literary censorship: top-down legislative bans; bottom-up activist and digital deplatforming movements; or market driven tactics that shape the current literary landscape.

Research-based Argument

(3000-3600 words; 10-12 pages) Students build on their work from the TIC to develop a balanced researched argument about the stakes of literary censorship in contemporary America.