Abstract
Hate and hostility toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer+ (LGBTQ+) community and people of color, inflamed in recent years by political extremism and radical conservatism, have permeated many areas of society. One context where hostilities have emerged in the past decade is public debate surrounding book challenges, which prompted a yearlong investigation into the polarizing phenomenon of book censorship in the United States. After extensive reading of media reports from around the nation, the authors focused on public discourse related to book challenges in Tennessee public and school libraries, where debate was contentious, librarians were threatened, and the state’s conservative legislature enacted sweeping legislation that purged books from school libraries. A corpus of public discourse from those debates over a 3-year period was analyzed to understand what social and political issues were constructed and reflected in book challenges discourse in Tennessee. Dominant themes were Christianity, gender identity issues, and parents’ rights.
Publication Date
Summer 2026
Included in
Information Literacy Commons, Scholarly Communication Commons, Scholarly Publishing Commons