History of Censorship from the Inquisition to the Internet

Undergraduate / Graduate

Censorship over time and space, with a focus on the history of books and information technologies. The class will meet in Special Collections, and students will work with rare books and archival materials. Half the course will focus on censorship in early modern Europe, Latin America and Iberian Asia, including the Inquisition, the printing press, and clandestine literature in the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Special focus on the effects of censorship on classical literature, both newly rediscovered works like Lucretius and lost books of Plato, and authors like Pliny the Elder and Seneca who had been available in the Middle Ages but became newly controversial in the Renaissance. The other half of the course will look at modern and contemporary issues, from wartime censorship, to comic books, to digital-rights management, to free speech on our own campus.