Thursday, Robert and I met with Dr. Finck at USAO. While we unfortunately did not gain as much information as we had hoped, Dr. Finck was still a wonderful resource and pointed us in other directions to further our search. He had not yet read The Catcher in the Rye, though did understand the stance of wanting to censor from the parental level if something were to be considered pornographic. This was a large claim in our case, so having a parental viewpoint aside from that of our own is useful.
Desk Capture. Max Corbin, 12 March 2018. Image.
Dr. Finck explained his area of expertise to us, which is good for future class references. We were directed to Dr. Hester, the American Indian Studies and Oklahoma History instructor here; Dr. Anderson, one of the Literature instructors here; and Dr. Rees, who may have instructed a class which discussed The Catcher in the Rye. That information will be followed-up on in the interview this Friday.
Dr. Brown was our interview last Friday and also incredibly helpful. She discussed censorship in general with us and reiterated parts of why Catcher is so controversial. She invited us to come back if we had any other questions for her and seemed whole-heartedly interested in our project.
Robert and I interviewed Dr. Hester today. His faculty page lists him correctly as the American Indian Studies professor and advisor, however there is little to no mention of his involvement with Oklahoma History outside of Native American context. This lead us to believe we may not receive helpful information from him. We were absolutely wrong, however, because Dr. Hester helped enormously in the context of Oklahoma in general. He corrected us on the belief of political lag, citing it as more of a strange inverted social atmosphere. Oklahoma began as a socialist-leaning state, housing more socialists than New York at one time, and during the era of the Tulsa case flipped to conservative views. Oklahoma does, however, have a social lag that can be about seven to ten years in length. This may be important as we look further into the historical context of the Tulsa challenge of Catcher in the Rye.
Overall, much information was gained from these interviews. While we may not have found the exact insight we were looking for, information was uncovered. One important take-away from these interviews, for me, was none of these individuals had heard of the Tulsa challenge much if at all. This really emphasized to me how much bannings in general get covered, but also just how far people were willing to go to in order to cover unfavorable events.
On the morning of March 5, I received emails from both USAO professors who were contacted and both are willing to do interviews. The process to select these instructors included personal experience in classes with them and reading the university’s faculty and staff directory page. Dr. Brenda Brown is the American Literature expert at this campus and Dr. James Finck is the American History expert. As our book was published in the United States and our cases will all be located within the United States, we decided these two would be the best candidates on this campus to interview. Below are questions we intend to ask each interviewee.
Precautionary
May we record this interview?
May we transcribe this interview and quote it?
May we place this interview on the USAO project site for historical and educational purposes?
Both
What controversies arose during the time period given?
How was censorship handled during this time period?
Does the 1960 Tulsa banning of The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger make you think of anything significant?
Dr. James Finck
What was the American political climate during the 1950s to the 1960s?
What were some of the domestic policies at the time?
Do you know the Oklahoma political climate during the aforementioned time period?
Who were in administrative positions within the federal and Oklahoma state governments of this time?
Dr. Brown
What were the literary movements during the 1960s, and how did they impact Oklahoma if at all?
Do you know of the controversies surrounding The Catcher in the Rye and what is your opinion on it?
What do you know of the bannings of The Catcher in the Rye in Oklahoma?
Old book bindings at the Merton College library. Tom Murphy VII. 25 August 2005, Image.
Robert has also contacted some of his previous instructors from another college to attempt to obtain information from them. To my understanding, one is offering library resources which may or may not be available at USAO and others may be willing to give interviews. If necessary, more instructors will be contacted for interviews. The transcripts should be available by the end of next week on the team project site.
Tuesday, February 13, 2018, Robert and I went to our IT Services to inquire about what technologies are available to us on the USAO campus. Mr. Adeel Siddiqui, the network administrator, met with us and gave us some advice on where to find various tools and equipment, along with people who could be good resources.
Mr. David Duncan is the TV/Video specialist at our school. We learned of his office, phone number and email address. Mr. Duncan could assist us if we desired to use some of the campus audio/video equipment to record anything for our project. He also has drones and possibly voice recorders, which are interesting and practical, respectively. Thankfully, for class purposes, I already have a personal voice recorder which we have used already in doing research.
Motherboard of Toshiba HD-A1. 26 Oct 2008, Simpsons Contributor. Creative Commons.
The next big piece of advice and information we were given by Mr. Siddiqui was how to find all of the computer labs on campus. This is the web page provided to students which lists the location and number of computers to each lab on campus. These computer labs are accessible by all students unless otherwise noted, in which case the person in charge should be easy to reach. There is at least one computer lab listed as public that not many tend to use as it is commonly attributed to being the Art Major lab where they can process their digital art best or access specific programs they are required to use. My understanding is this lab also prints color images, which is not noted on the page.
We were told about the lecture capture which is available for some classes and the school’s intent to put the technology in nearly every classroom on campus. This was pleasant to hear, as well as helpful in giving advice to other students in the future, despite not being immediately relevant to our situation. Mr. Scott Haselwood, director of instructional technology at USAO, is in charge of the lecture capture, as well as any technologies used in the classroom. He could be incredibly helpful with finding additional online tools we do not already know about or troubleshooting with certain tools we are already using. Mr. Haselwood sends a monthly newsletter email regarding technologies in the classroom, each displaying new tools or programs available to students and instructors alike. Mr. Siddiqui gave us Mr. Haselwood’s office, phone and email as well to contact him with any questions.
Overall, I have a sense that any tools or resources we do not have that we may need are either already available or able to be obtained here.
Friday, February 2nd, Robert and I visited with our college librarian and archivist, Kelly Brown in her office in Nash Library. Mx. Brown met with us for about twenty minutes and gave us advice regrading our particular library and resources around Oklahoma.
Mx. Brown has been at Nash Library since 2002 and has a bias of ensuring the freedom to read books as individuals desire the information. No books have been challenged at Nash since Mx. Brown has been there, though she is unsure about the Chickasha Public Library. She has recently purchased one hundred books for the school, and in the interest of limiting the inevitable influx of complaints for the new book list she has opted not to email a disclosure of the full list, though she did inform us it consists of books regarding Islamophobia, atheists and white Christians. Due to USAO’s interdisciplinary nature, Mx. Brown finds it difficult to narrow the scope of books she is interested in purchasing.
Along with the Chickasha Public Libraray, the Oklahoman, Oklahoma City Metropolitan Library, Oklahoma Department of Libraries and Oklahoma Library Association were given as good places to contact or search for cases or information regarding cases. She also recommended the ALA website as a precursory search. She advised us to attempt to get an interview with an older librarian in Oklahoma City who would know more history behind the local challenges. Mx. Brown looked up the call numbers and gave us directions to the Literature Suppressed series and Banned in the U.S.A., which we have checked out to use in our research. There is another resource book we cannot check out of the library but now know the location of. Unfortunately, I failed to write down the title of this book and only have the call number.
Another resource our library has of a different kind is the availability of small study spaces within the book stacks called corrals where we will have space to scatter books and be in an uninterrupted quiet location for research. This was my first time visiting the corrals since they were first mentioned for naming. A next step I would look for us to take would be to contact the local librarians and attempt to set up an interview with them regarding their perspectives and information they may have on what we hope to be a more solid local case.
As Mx. Brown is also our local archivist, she gave us some insight into the process from a more personal perspective. She admits personal biases may play into what does and does not get archived and how. She had slight conflict when, after a professor died and she was looking to archive documents, Mx. Brown wanted to archive a letter others deemed too personal and socially difficult regarding that person’s sexuality. I hadn’t previously thought about what information may or may not be chosen to be archived. This brings forward that what one archivist may find important may not have been documented as at the time it was seen as inappropriate or unimportant to keep.
Max – Do you know of any kinds of book challenges in this district or…?
Kelly – I can only speak to challenges to books here at Nash and we haven’t had any since I’ve been here which has been since 2002. I don’t know about Chickasha Public Library. I believe there have been some challenges in Edmond to Romeo and Juliet this was probably a few years ago and that’s because of the suicide and then, I can’t think of anything else off the top of my head. That’s doesn’t mean it-they weren’t there. Or, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t other challenges I just can’t think of them right now.
Max – What are kind of your thoughts and opinions on book censorship?
Kelly – I don’t think it should occur. That really is the stance of the American Library Association as well, obviously and they are the main – what am I going to say – I guess the main advocate against censorship and banning book and they – you know, they are the ones that do banned books week they do some other things and so if you go to their website you can – there’ll actually be a list of challenges they keep track of
Challenges around the country. But even if it weren’t for ALA and even if I wasn’t a librarian I would still be against it I think people should be able to read what they want and be able to form their own ideas based on them.
Max – Are you also the archivist for this school?
Kelly – I am. And there’s an element of – in every – you can’t… Like, I just finished buying nearly one hundred book for the library which means I selected the ones I thought were appropriate for this library. So there is an element of bias when I purchase books for the library, and a lot of people “well, why didn’t you buy that?” And this honestly came up when I was buying this because I bought something about non-believers or atheists and then I bought another one about white Christianity and I bought – and I though “Okay, do I have a balance between sort of the religious viewpoints here in these books that I bought” because you are very attuned to the fact that you are selecting books and that you have your own biases and everything so you kind of have to overcome those as a librarian. And I was thinking about sending out the lists of these books that I bought but I’m like “No, because somebody’s going to complain about one of them”. You know, I’ll just let them get here, let them come and see them and everything. A lot of people might – I bought one on Islamophobia and I thought well, see what happens with that. Usually people don’t say anything. I mean I’ve never had anybody challenge anything like that. There is an element of bias in selection of books. I try to keep my biases to just those programs that we support here, but with USAO it’s difficult because we’re so interdisciplinary and we encourage thinking outside the box of the curriculum or whatever that you guys come up with stuff that you know I haven’t that we don’t have a program for but we still should have a book because somebody … just because we don’t support that program somebody’s still going to be curious about it, want to do research in it. There is an element of bias.
4:37
There is also an element of bias in archives and what you choose to keep and not keep. Not long ago, actually several years ago, there was a professor here who died and he’d been here a long time and I was going through his papers to see what we wanted to keep and what we didn’t want to keep and there were several things in there about his homosexuality and there was a letter from the 70’s telling him to – hat he was in dep trouble because of this and everything. Of course, I’m going to keep it, but there would be a lot of people who would think “he was really private about that and therefore should you keep it and essentially out him after he’s dead”, so there are some issues like that in terms of – but I think it would have been wrong to sort of censor it from what we kept about him. Not sure if that’s what you’re looking for or not.
Max – So we would contact you to schedule to come and look through the archives if we –
Kelly – What are you looking for in the archives?
Max – We’re not sure. If we wanted to see if there was anything that would kind of help us
Kelly – Sure. Definitely. Or Nicole. Nicole down at the other office if I’m not here, Nikole can help, too. Nicole is actually a grad student at OU in librarian archive in that program there. In the library, if you notice in the stacks there are sometimes books with orange stickers covering the call number? That means that book’s been challenged or banned, not by us, but somewhere in the United States. We identify them because we want to encourage people to read banned books. You know, we used to do Banned Books Week, but we lost that and haven’t been able to keep up with that. What all are you guys doing in the class?
Max – We have to research a local instance of a book being challenged or banned and then relate it to any national challenges we can find about that book.
Kelly – And by local can it be Oklahoma?
Max – yes.
Kelly – You might be able to – we have access to the Daily – the Oklahoman, used to be called the Daily Oklahoman it’s just the Oklahoman now, from 19-whenever it started to the present so you can go search there and you could just search for “challenged book” or whatever that might give you an idea of what goes on here in Oklahoma. I would also check the ALA Banned Books Website it’s ala.org and just drill down from there. And then, Oklahoma Library Association might have something I don’t know. So might the Oklahoma Department of Libraries. Both of those are, Oklahoma Department of Libraries would be, I actually don’t know that they would be better than the other one or not. The website is far more developed than Oklahoma Library Association, but they might not address that content. I believe there’s been some. There was a challenge to is it Ten Drum by I can’t think of the name. I would start at the ALA Website and see if you could find one in Oklahoma and if you can’t find one in Oklahoma go to the Daily Oklahoman or the Oklahoman Archives. Which you can get to through the library’s website if you have any problems let me know. I think that’s probably – those are good places to start I think. Oklahoma City Metropolitan Library might have some stuff too – Gunter Grass is the guy who wrote Ten Drum I believe. That’s right. I believe it has been challenged in Oklahoma City maybe within the last 20, 25 years. So they might have something as well. If you can get an interview with one of the librarian in Oklahoma City you might have somebody there who’s been there a while who can tell you look for the old people who’ve been around for a while.
10:00
Max – I think that’s pretty much all the questions I have. Is there anything that you wanna add about being a librarian, things on book censorship?
Kelly – We do have several books upstairs on – that’s a good point. Up in the Z’s on the top floor you’ll find some – I think it’s called books that have been challenged or challenged books let’s see. That might give you a good start to just find those books. See if I can give you a better call number. [typing] Should be in the Z-1019 area. This is called Hit List – Frequently Challenged Book for Young Adults. And let me see try banning books. 658. I would try both of these areas upstairs they’ll be close together. They’ll be on this end of the very top floor and there’ll be lists of books there. I think the only – let’s see – I think James Joyce’s Ulysses couldn’t be – if you’re familiar with that work – couldn’t be published in the united states for many years. It’s sort an interesting story if you want to read about it and it had to be published by Sylvia Beach who would live in Paris and they sort of clandestinely got published because it was so very very different. They wouldn’t allow it in the United States they weren’t allowed to ship it to the united states for a very long time. You should look it up. It’s an interesting – that’s one of the – you know a lot of these are challenges. Banning and challenging obviously aren’t the same thing and so the ban on Ulysses coming into the United States is sort of important. That’s the story around that. I don’t know of any other books right of the top of my head that face that. That was in the 20s, 30s some time around then I can’t remember the exact publication date of Ulysses but it’s a very interesting story.
13:16
Max – Random instance that popped into my head – What is your opinion on – Would it be considered censorship that the last chapter of Clockwork Orange was excluded from the American edition for quite a while?
Kelly – I would think so. I think definitely. Was it published in England first and then -? Okay. Who published it in the United States?
Max – I don’t recall.
Kelly – Okay. Yeah, to me it’s censorship. Is that Penguin? I don’t think it’s Penguin, I was trying to think of who had – let me look it up.
Max – Just something random that I remember. I heard at one point they took out the last chapter because they didn’t want to main character to have the sudden revelation and grow up.
Kelly – As America – “They deemed it to be sell-out, bland and very very British” is what the quote is here. Now, that’s a different story almost in that – I thought it was going to be banned for sort of the controversial theme of the book, but they’re saying that it was not a – they’re using as an almost it won’t play to an American audience because of this last chapter. So that’s almost a marketing decision rather than a banning. At least that’s the official story. That’s interesting. That is a really good question. I’m not familiar with the – to me it seems marketing more than censorship. It’s more tame censorship rather than censorship because you don’t like the language or something that’s being said in the book or the message you know like a suicide or something but it still seems kind of wrong. It says here that they started adding it back in in 1986. Wonder if it – wonder if the sales were any different from pre-chapter 21 and post-chapter 21. Interesting.
Max – Do you have any questions?
Robert – No, I’m sorry.
Max – Do you have any questions for us?
Kelly – What is – Tell me about the class. What are you all doing in there?
Max – we are reading through things like what censorship is what books have been challenged kind of on the United States level we have to do some sort of project where we talk about whatever book we pick.
Kelly – Okay. What’d you guys pick?
Robert – We initially picked LOTR because we heard that it got banned in some schools because of – it was essentially satanic writing. Sow we thought we could track one of these cases down to Oklahoma but apparently there wasn’t any. We’re kind of looking for a new book to write over.
Kelly – So you’re both reading that book? You have to read the same book?
Robert – Yeah, we’re paired as a group.
Kelly – Oh, okay. If you have any problems locating something in Oklahoma, let me know. But I think you’ll find some – I think you’ll do okay on the ALA website finding that. Sounds like an interesting class. Good luck. Do you like the format – videoing and things?
Max – it’s different.
Kelly – is it? Different than an in-class? Do you like one over the other?
Max – It’s pretty even. Thankfully the – when the connection between computers is good it runs almost like a normal class here. I was almost kind of surprised we have a team-taught class.
Kelly – All of those classes are team-taught the ones done by COPLAC. Do you like being able to interact with students from other institutions?
Max – I think we would enjoy it more if maybe we would all talk a little more? It’s kind of like “hi, I’m here”.
Kelly – Well, take the lead on that. Talk more because once one starts talking a lot of people fall in and start. It always makes a better class for the instructor when everybody speaks up so, your instructors would probably appreciate it. Don’t be shy. I’m glad you guys stopped by. Let me know if I can help more. Fun topic.
