Defend the Right to Read: Resources for Opposing Book Bans

Here are some resources for supporting public libraries and defending everyone’s right to read freely. I assembled them for the “Censoring Children’s Literature” class I taught last semester, and am sharing them now in connection with the Modern Language Association panel “Drag Queens, Stories about Black People, and Other Dangers,” held in the Liberty Room

CHILDREN’S LITERATURE, COMICS/GRAPHIC NOVELS, AND CHILDHOOD STUDIES AT MLA 2024

Here are all of the 2024 MLA sessions devoted to Children’s Literature, Comics/Graphic Novels, or Childhood Studies. The conference will be held this year in person in Philadelphia — and on-line, as noted below. I’ll be there! I’m chairing one on-line session and one in-person session. If you’ll be there, too, stop by and say

Why Are People Afraid of Multicultural Children’s Books? (Geschichte der Gegenwart)

Why are people afraid of multicultural children’s books?  To answer that question, I look back to the roots of American censorship — which, as you doubtless know, has been enjoying a renaissance lately.  My piece makes its debut today in Geschichte der Gegenwart, a Swiss publication the title of which means History of the Present. That’s

CALL FOR PAPERS: MLA, Jan 4-7, 2024, Philadelphia

Call for Papers: Nostalgia in and for Children’s Literature CFP for a guaranteed session sponsored by the MLA Forum on Children’s and Young Adult Literature. To be held at the 2024 MLA in Philadelphia, January 4-7, 2024 Nostalgia is a transideological phenomenon. Its politics depend upon the direction of its longing. There’s the restorative variety that

Children’s Literature, Comics/Graphic Novels, and Childhood Studies at MLA 2023

Here are all of the Children’s Literature and Comics/Graphic Novels sessions at the 2023 MLA, held this year in person in San Francisco — and on-line, as noted below. I’ll actually be there this year. (I’d planned to attend last year’s, but Omicron pushed most of the conference on-line. Here’s hoping any new variants prove

Philip Nel, giving commencement speech, Kansas State University, 10 Dec. 2022

Learning, Unlearning, and the Freedom to Read (commencement speech)

I was asked to give the commencement speech at the College of Arts and Sciences ceremony this morning. Here is the video — my speech begins at 15:01. Below, the full text.         Good morning, graduates, families, friends, fellow teachers and fellow learners — for we are all always learning and, I think, all always teaching.

Constanze von Kitzing's Ich bin anders als du: cover

Who Is Welcome?: Multiculturalism in German Picturebooks Since 1989 (The Lion & The Unicorn)

I’m delighted to announce the publication of “Who Is Welcome?: Images of Multiculturalism in German Picturebooks Since 1989,” an essay I wrote with my friend Dr. Ada Bieber (of Humboldt Universität, Berlin).  It appears in the latest issue of The Lion and the Unicorn (Vol. 46, No. 1) — and don’t let that January 2022 date

50 Dr. Seuss books that are still available

Breaking up with your favorite racist childhood classic books (Washington Post)

Head on over to the Washington Post for “Breaking up with your favorite racist childhood classic books,” in which I point out that         It is possible to cancel a culture. There were once more than 300 indigenous languages spoken in the United States. Only about 175 of those languages remain today. Colonization, genocide, forced

Golan Moskowitz, Wild Visionary

Wild Visionary: Maurice Sendak in Queer Jewish Context

If you missed this book launch today, please do check it out! On-hand was MIT Prof. Marah Gubar (children’s literature scholar extraordinaire), Gregory Maguire (author of Wicked), Brian Selznick (author of The Invention of Hugo Cabret), and of course Golan Moskowitz himself. It’s a pretty big deal to gather such a constellation of luminaries for a book