Save the Dates! Winter Events Jan-Mar 2026

JOIN US in 2026 FOR THE FOLLOWING:

• 13 January, 17:00-19:00, SpecOps: Banned Books in Conversation
  - Dr. Patricia Kennon will discuss Lois Lowry's The Giver (1993)
• 20 January, 18:00-20:00, ES 131: Banned Books in Motion
  - Film screening of Banned Together (2025) (sponsored by the FH Münster)
• 11-13 February: Online Conference Thinking of the Children: "Book Bans, Censorship and Literature for Young People"
  - 14:00-19:00, 11 & 12 February
  - 12:00-17:00, 13 February
• 26 March, 18:00-20:00, SpecOps: Banned Books in Conversation
  - Aline Franzus will discuss Maia Kobabe's Gender Queer (2019)

We are delighted to share that our student Kareshan Mayurathan has founded a banned books book club as an adjacent event series. The dates and books can be found on the poster below:

In response to the steep increase in book banning and (attempted) censorship in the USA and beyond, the University of Münster’s Chairs for Book Studies (Prof. Dr. Norrick-Rühl) and American Studies (Prof. Dr. Schultermandl) have founded a “Banned Books Network Münster” (BBNM). Two postdoctoral researchers at the Chair of American Studies, Dr. Jennifer Gouck (2025 WiRe fellow) and Dr. Sarah Pyke, are co-founders of this initiative. Our purpose is to raise awareness of the increase in book banning, and to create space for engagement with banned books and the wider repercussions of these bans. Our events are inclusive in nature, and we hope to engage students, teachers, colleagues and the wider reading public with our initiative.

Thanks to everyone who joined us for our previous stimulating discussions. The next event will take place on January 13, 2026. Registration is requested, but not mandatory.

If you would like to know more and stay up to date about our events, please join our email mailing list by registering here: https://listserv.uni-muenster.de/mailman/listinfo/banned-books-network. We will only distribute network-specific information through the list. You can unsubscribe at any time.

We will share more resources here soon. In the meantime, we highly recommend the websites of PEN America and the American Library Association (ALA), which both share statistics and infographics about challenged and banned books.

Banned Books Network Münster in the News

• 6 October 2025 | Bücher auf dem Index - Wie Book Bans und Verbote die Literatur bedrohen | SWR | Das Wissen | SWR
• 15 July 2025 | Zensiert fürs Mutmachen – Wie Trumps Amerika Bilderbücher ins Visier nimmt | Deutschlandfunk | Corso | Deutschlandfunk