Banned Books, Burned Books: Forbidden Literary Works

Beginning the course with an introduction to the concept of literary censorship and examining why even authors as influential and esteemed as Shakespeare can fall prey to it.

James Joyce's Ulysses is considered the novel that ushered modernism into mainstream literature, yet its introduction to the world was ruthlessly contested.

British author D. H. Lawrence was widely viewed as one of the greatest writers of the English language, yet this popularity did not prevent some readers from taking offense to his frank depictions of sexuality, resulting in an obscenity trial.

Stepping back in time to get the broader historical context for censorship and seeing how the cases of the 20th and 21st centuries fit into a much larger pattern of religious and moral pressure from the 12th century onward.

Meet Anthony Comstock, the relentless late-19th-century enforcer of Victorian codes of sexual propriety.

Here, look at the most extreme form of print censorship: the physical destruction of books deemed heretical, dangerous, or subversive.