Maus: Why it Should be Unbanned.
N ews about the McMinn County School Board’s unanimous decision to strike Maus from its curriculum made national headlines. This piece from guest essayist Professor Brett Ashley Kaplan addresses why that decision should be reversed. Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning work was not only the anchor text for a module on the Holocaust in McMinn County Schools, it is shockingly... Read More.
Aphorisms Unplugged: Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
T hese days, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps means to succeed on your own, through sheer will and hard work. It originally meant something quite different, but what? Sometimes that well-worn adage doesn’t really mean what our literal-minded, text-focused, Google-driven world thinks it means. One reason this happens is that, quite simply, language evolves. To further complicate matters,... Read More.
Show Me on the Doll Where This Book Hurt You
A poem by that addresses not only the limited thinking behind censorship, but also the dangerous implications of the practice. By Daniel W. Wright. . . They finally started coming for the information Just as they once went after music Put a parental warning sticker over my mouth and the mouth of every writer out there To Kill... Read More.