Author: bozarth (Page 2 of 2)

Meeting With Our Research Librarian

February 11, 2019 / bozarth / 0 Comments

Genevieve and I set up a meeting with our research librarian, Nicole McMonagle, last week. We were able to sit down with her and discuss our case on Thursday. She was really helpful in explaining the online sources available to us.

https://trend.usao.edu/sites/trend.usao.edu/files/styles/large/public/articles/2015/07-Jul/nash.jpg?itok=vQwwmlqA

Available Resources

Nicole explained to us the current state of the archives at USAO, which was not favorable. Not only are they still attempting to organize the collection, but all of the information is directly related to USAO or Oklahoma College for Women, as it was formerly named. She didn’t seem confident that anything in our library’s collection would be of use, but she did direct us to helpful links on the school website.

USAO has subscriptions available to students she showed us. We have access to the entire Daily Oklahoman online, and all of the digital archives from the University of Oklahoma. The school also recently acquired access to a database called HeinOnline. It allows us to view government or historical documents, which could be really helpful to our case. She seemed really hopeful about the new opportunity. She showed us how to access everything, and encouraged us to reach out to her if we hit any road blocks in our research.

Sources Outside USAO

She also talked to us about other options for further research, since our collection is limited. Our library has an inter-library loan system, which we already used to order a book. We might be able to gain access to relevant articles through it. She also encouraged us to go to other libraries who might have archives. The public library in Norman (the town of our case) has archives of The Norman Transcript, which we plan on looking through. She encouraged us to up to OU if we think we might find anything helpful there. We are lucky that there are so many resources available to us there, and plan on exploring the subject more in the weeks to come.

Progress Update: Actual Progress Gets Made

February 4, 2019 / bozarth / 0 Comments

At the beginning of our project, my partner and I were having trouble finding a case to research. We only found one case, in which Brave New World was challenged in Yukon in 1988. For a while our research was stunted. We discovered an article about the school board meeting, where the angry parent started yelling after they voted to keep the book in the curriculum. This seemed like it had potential to be interesting, but since it was so long ago, we wanted to keep our options open for another case.

Another Case Opportunity

I emailed two librarians I know who work in Norman Public Schools on Wednesday. I inquired if they had any knowledge of censorship disputes in their school system. Kelsey Barker, the librarian at Longfellow Middle School, responded with links to news coverage of a very interesting case. In 2009, at Whittier Middle School, the librarian won a charity auction for a visit from author Ellen Hopkins. She was scheduled to come talk to students during Banned Book Week, because her poem books are constantly challenged for their mature content. A parent challenged her book Glass at the same time. They took her books out of the library during the dispute and cancelled her visit.

The backlash from this was astounding. We found multiple newspaper articles, references to it being discussed on a local news station (although we have been unable to find a working clip), and a blog post by Ellen Hopkins. This blog post led us to uncover a poem she wrote about the event for Banned Book Week. She ended the blog post with the last stanza:

“Torch every book.
Burn every page.
Char every word to ash.
Ideas are incombustible.
And therein lies your real fear.”
Ellen Hopkins, “Manifesto”

Research Begins

As a team we immediately got to work. I found the email address of the librarian who worked there at the time. Her name is Karin Perry and she now works in higher education at Sam Houston State University. Since that is five hours away from us, I plan on emailing her to see if she would be interested letting us conduct an interview via Skype. My older sister also used to work at the school, and told me she would contact a teacher connected to the case to ask if she could share her information with us for the project.

Genevieve emailed the current superintendent of Norman Public Schools, Dr. Nick Migliorino, requesting a release of the information involving the case. Alesha M. Leemaster, the director of communications and community relations, emailed us back the next day. She was, understandably curious about the nature of our project, which did not surprise us. She inquired as to the nature of the class, what we planned to do with our research and how it would be displayed. She seemed willing to work with us for the time being. We haven’t heard anything else from the office yet. Hopefully our research will keep progressing.

Works Cited:

https://ellenhopkins.livejournal.com/7107.html

https://newsok.com/article/3402996/norman-parents-questions-stop-authors-visit-to-school

Progress Update: Actual Progress Gets Made

February 4, 2019 / bozarth / 0 Comments

Another Case Opportunity

“Torch every book.
Burn every page.
Char every word to ash.
Ideas are incombustible.
And therein lies your real fear.”
Ellen Hopkins, “Manifesto”

Research Begins

Works Cited:

https://ellenhopkins.livejournal.com/7107.html

https://newsok.com/article/3402996/norman-parents-questions-stop-authors-visit-to-school

Understanding Censorship Motivation

January 23, 2019 / bozarth / 0 Comments

Response to “Politics in Children’s Literature: Colliding Forces to Shape Young Minds”

Personal Experience

I have always loved to read. I had really supportive parents, who allowed me access to pretty much any book I could get my hands on, as well as encouraging me to engage with the content of the books, whether it was negative or positive. My mother, grandmother, two aunts, and sister are all teachers; they all understand the importance of literature beyond the scope of test scores. While reading the chapter in Belinda Louie’s book about politics in children’s literature, I was struck by the reality of censorship, and the way it aims to stop critical thinking in children. As an English major, literature for me is about more than just reading text off a page. Authors, as Louie says, write to bring their own perspective into the world, and to not engage with them because they make kids/parents uncomfortable seems more harmful to social development.

Censorship as a Parenting Tool

Mikhail Bakhtin, when describing his idea of the chronotope, argues that any texts with a woman as the main character is inherently political. To many people, this logic works for children’s literature. Any underrepresented character becomes political. According to Louie, if an author rights to express the view point of someone homosexual or a person of color, that is a political choice made by the author. She goes into this in the section about parents, and their reactions to texts without the non-controversial “white male” protagonist.

Some parents want to protect their children from unpleasant realities. Most parents prefer education that favors their particular worldview or that refrains from exposing their children to certain realities of life
page 7

The “certain realities of life” are themes like the racial tension present in To Kill A Mockingbird, which she uses as an example of parents banning successfully from a classroom. Parents not wanting their children to engage in critical thinking about the text, has a ripple affect on all other stakeholders in censorship politics.

Effects of Parental Censorship

According to Louie, the only political stake students have in the politics of children’s literature is their basic enjoyment of the materials. While I don’t think this gives enough credit to students, in her experience that seems to be true. What really runs the political game of the types of things read in school is the parents. Their opinions influence teachers, school administrators, and publishers. There is a culture in schools that pages read is more important that critical thinking and understanding of what was read. The books most commonly censored are the ones that address hard questions, and in turn advance the worldview of the students.