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.

The first event took place on Thursday, May 22, 2025 and the second event took place on Thursday, July 3, 2025. Thanks to everyone who joined us for these stimulating discussions. Two more events of this type are planned for 2025: on October 23, 2025 and on December 11, 2025. Registration is requested, but not mandatory. Please follow these links for more information and registration: https://indico.uni-muenster.de/event/3584/ for the October 23 event about Annie on My Mind and https://indico.uni-muenster.de/event/3585/ for the December 11 event on Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. We are also planning adjacent film screenings (communicated via the mailing list). We look forward to seeing you there.

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:

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.