Banned and Censored Media

Use this guide as a portal to banned and censored media books, articles etc.

The American Library Association (ALA) maintains a useful website of Banned & Challenged Books.  It answers the questions such as to, "What is the difference between a challenge and a banning?" and "Why are books challenged?"  It includes lists of banned book by author, by year, and by decade. There is also a link to statistics.

Each Year the ALA celebrates Banned Books Week:
"Banned Books Week (BBW) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States."

A list of "Banned and Challenged Classics"  held at the I.C. Library appears to the right..  The countries and places that banned the title are described on the followinging ALA website: Banned and/or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course - Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century.

ALA also compiles a top ten frequently challenged books list:

Morales, Macey, & Peterson, Jennifer. (2010, April 14). Book on text messaging teens prompts most book challenges of 2009. ALA.    This page also announces a Top 100 Challenged/Banned  Books list for the years 2000 through 2009.

Many organizations sponsor Banned Books Week such as the: American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression and the Association of American Publishers amongst others.

Best Bets:

• LISTA: Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts   Sample search: (banned or censored) and (books or media) 
• Academic Search Premier   Sample search: (banned or censored) and (books or media) 
• JSTOR
  Complete backfiles of core scholarly journals, searchable by journal or discipline. Files do not include the latest 3-5 years. The content is delivered as page images.
  
• Project Muse
  Full-text scholarly journals in the Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences and Mathematics; Coverage varies by journal but generally only 2-3 current years.

Also search LexisNexis for current news and law review articles:

• LexisNexis Academic
  Full-text access to continuously updated news, law, and business information. Highlights: News: newswires, transcripts, regional, national/international news, & Gallup Polls; Legal: law review articles, federal case law, and federal/state codes; Business: company profiles, country profiles, and SEC filings; People: directories from the entertainment industry, elected officials, executives, politicians, and obituaries.  Also has a section that includes full-text of several health newsletters and abstracts of articles in major medical journals.

SSRN may have som working papers:

• Social Science Research Network (SSRN)

Censored: an annual compilation of censored stories

• Allan, K. (2006). Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Banned & Censored. (2000). [videorecording].  WinStar Home Entertainment. Includes 13 full-length, fully restored cartoons, made during the 1930s and 1940s, which were banned or censored by the Hayes Office.
• Black, G. D. (1994). Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics, and the Movies. Cambridge studies in the history of mass communications. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press.
• Boyer, P. S. (2002). Purity in Print: Book Censorship in America from the Gilded Age to the Computer Age. Print culture history in modern America (2nd ed.). Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin Press.
• Bleep! Censoring Rock and Rap Music. (1999). Contributions to the study of popular culture. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press.
• Blecha, P. (2004). Taboo Tunes: A History of Banned Bands & Censored Songs. San Francisco: Backbeat Books.
• Burn This Book: PEN Writers Speak Out on the Power of the Word. (2009). (1st ed.). New York, NY: HarperStudio.
• Dershowitz, A. M. (2002). Shouting Fire: Civil Liberties in a Turbulent Age (1st ed.). Boston: Little, Brown.
• Doyle, R. P. (2010). Banned Books: Challenging Our Freedom to Read. Chicago, Ill: American Library Association.
• Haight, A. L. (1978). Banned Books, 387 B.C. to 1978 A.D (4th ed.). New York: R. R. Bowker.
• Howl on Trial: The Battle for Free Expression. (2006).  San Francisco: City Lights Books.
• Jansen, S. C. (1991). Censorship: The Knot That Binds Power and Knowledge. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Johnson, T. (1997). Censored Screams: The British Ban on Hollywood Horror in the Thirties. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland.
• Levinson, N. (2003). Outspoken Free Speech Stories. Berkeley: University of California Press.  This is an ebook and can be viewed online.
• Parker, A. M. (1997). Purifying America: Women, Cultural Reform, and Pro-Censorship Activism, 1873-1933. Women in American history. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
• Semonche, J. E. (2007). Censoring Sex: A Historical Journey Through American Media. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
• Sova, D. B. (2001). Forbidden Films: Censorship Histories of 125 Motion Pictures. Facts on File library of world literature. New York: Facts On File.
• Sova, D. B. (2006). Literature Suppressed on Sexual Grounds. Facts on File library of world literature (Rev. ed.). New York: Facts On File.
• Tropiano, S. (2009). Obscene, Indecent, Immoral, and Offensive: 100+ Years of Censored, Banned, and Controversial Films. New York: Limelight Editions. Prof. Tropiano teaches at Ithaca College's L.A. location.
• The United States of America V. One Book Entitled Ulysses by James Joyce: Documents and Commentary: A 50-Year Retrospective. (1984). Frederick, MD: University Publications of America.
• Wartzman, R. (2008). Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (1st ed.). New York, NY: PublicAffairs.

Click on one of these subjects from out catalog to find books, ebooks and videos:

• Books and reading--United States.
• Censorship United States
• Freedom of information--United States.
• Motion pictures--Censorship--United States
• Music--Censorship
• Prohibited Books
• Reportage literature, American

Also try a keyword search for banned OR censored.

Harris Interactive: "Most Americans opposed to Banning any books" (2001) (pdf) From Harris Vault.

• Law
• Government and Media

• Donald A. Downs "Obscenity and Pornography" The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. Kermit L. Hall. Oxford University Press. 2005. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Ithaca College. 
• Triplett, W. (2004, April 16). Broadcast indecency. CQ Researcher, 14, 321-344.
• Censorship. From: West's Encyclopedia of American Law. Ed. Shirelle Phelps and Jeffrey Lehman. Vol. 7. 2nd ed. Detroit: Gale, 2005. p296. Word Count: 152. 
• Obscenity. From: West's Encyclopedia of American Law. Ed. Shirelle Phelps and Jeffrey Lehman. Vol. 7. 2nd ed. Detroit: Gale, 2005. p296. Word Count: 152. 

Also try searching CQ Researcher for background information. Here are their guides for Communication and the Mass Media: Regulation and Legal issues

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