Help bring the educational program Censorship and Information Control During Information Revolutions to life by donating to their Kickstarter. Cory Doctorow (In Real Life, Walkaway, Information Doesn’t Want to be Free), along with historian and novelist Ada Palmer, and author, professor, Adrian Johns have joined together to bring forth a series recorded dialogues, a museum exhibit, and publications that will look at the development of information technologies from the printing press through modernity and consider questions concerning how control and censorship have altered with each evolutionary step forward.
25 scholars, journalists, advocates, and other specialized intellects will explore and uncover parallels between the past and present information revolutions to help illuminate where we are today, how we got here, and what the repercussions of our decisions today could mean for tomorrow. These dialogues will be distributed through eight video sessions, that are going to be offered freely to the public.
Video Session Topics
October 5th: Introduction, Censorship & Information Control During Information Revolutions
Featuring Ada Palmer, Adrian Johns, and Cory Doctorow
October 12th: What Are Censorship’s Historical Consequences?
Featuring Antony Grafton (Renaissance & early modern book history)
Gehnwa Hayek (censorship of comics in contemporary Lebanon)
James Larue (American Library Association Office of Intellectual Freedom)
Mary Anne Monharaj (literary consequences of colonialism in Sri Lanka)
October 19th: Theory and Practice of Freedom of Expression
Featuring Kathleen Belew (use of technologies by modern US hate groups)
David Copeland (history and origins of free speech debates)
October 26th: News, Politics and the Ownership of Information
Featuring Will Slauter (news in the early print period)
Siva Vaidhyanathan (digital media & social networks)
November 2nd: Data About Data Suppression
Featuring Nicholas Davidson (Inquisition trials)
Joshua Craze (contemporary state document redaction, Guantanamo Bay & other cases)
November 9th: Changes in Media Technology Small and Large
Featuring Charles Brownstein & Ted Adams (Comic Book Legal Defense Fund)
Patrick & Teresa Nielsen Hayden (editors & publishers, Tor Books, Macmillan)
Aram Seinrich (digital music, piracy)
November 16th: Policing Performance
Featuring Brice Stratford & the Droll Players (performing banned 17th century plays)
Stephen Nicholson (UK theater censorship)
Elsa Sjunneson-Henry (burlesque performance)
November 30th: Controlling Readers, Policing Reception
Featuring Kyeong-Hee Choi (colonial censorship in occupied Korea under Japanese rule)
Wendy Doniger (author of a book censored in India)
Alan Charles Kors (Enlightenment censorship & book regulation, free speech on College Campuses)
Hannah Marcus (Inquisition licensing process, history of science)
Stuart McManus (Iberian empires, Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions)
Glenn Tiffert (contemporary China, internet censorship)
To read more in-depth descriptions of each video session topic, check out the Kickstarter page or the project’s homepage.
Part of the project includes a Museum exhibit that opened September 17, 2018, entitled “History of Censorship and Information Control from the Inquisition to the Internet” that is taking place at The University of Chicago Special Collections Research Library until December 14, 2018. There will also be a printed catalog of the exhibit with pictures and descriptions of the items in the exhibit to create a lasting record of the exhibit, as well as a book of essays by the specialists featured in the video sessions, containing their reflections on the project.
The Censorship and Information Control During Information Revolutions is very nearly funded, but the more they raise the longer they can keep the project going, including developing additional resources. There are also still plenty of great rewards for donating to the project including, your name redacted in a thank you, a curated gallery tour, or an hour chat with Cory Doctorow, Ada Palmer, or CBLDF’s own Charles Brownstein about the project for a few lucky sponsors.
Help support CBLDF’s important First Amendment work in 2018 by visiting the Rewards Zone, making a donation, or becoming a member of CBLDF!