Banned Book Network Münster: Banned Books in Conversation (Dr. Nicholas Johnson on "MAUS")

In response to the steep increase in book banning and attempted book challenges in the USA and beyond, the University of Münster’s Chairs for Book Studies and American Studies have co-founded “Banned Books Network Münster” (BBNM). Our purpose is to raise awareness of the increase in book banning, to create spaces for engagement with banned books, and to discuss 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.

In early 2022, a Tennessee school district removed Art Spieglman's graphic novel MAUS from its curriculum, ostensibly because of nudity and profanity. Its 2022 ban provoked a wave of international condemnation in the press, which rightly saw this move as part of the wider book banning movement within the United States. Although widely-loved and critically acclaimed, MAUS has garnered controversy since its publication and the 2022 controversy was only the latest battle over Spiegelman's work.

Nicholas Johnson's talk will not just focus on the ban in 2022, but also on the longer international controversies about MAUS since its publication in the 1991, whether debates about the appropriateness of depicting the Holocaust in comics seen in Germany, Israel, and the United States, or calls for its ban in Poland. Johnson will also touch on the difficulties encountered with its translations, which in some instances led to the censorship of certain panels. MAUS' status as both a classic of the comics medium and as a lightning rod of controversy illustrate that debates about difficult history are integral to book bans today.