Ban-O-Rama: Reorienting Intellectual Freedom through a Satirical Frosh Week Event
Channel: Dave Hudson (the Librarian)
Date: 2013-06-03

*If you've seen other presentations on Ban-O-Rama before (such as http://youtu.be/ujUNd8VFF-w), please feel free to skip ahead to 20:39 **

This presentation both showcased and critically unpacked Ban-O-Rama, a highly successful intellectual freedom event that has been staged for new undergrads during fall orientation week since 2010. The event unfolds as an unrelentingly satirical game show, inviting students, on behalf of the Library, to "censor stuff and win!" 

This presentation offered an account of the logistics and outcomes of the initiative, as well as elaborating on deeper questions that the initiative's development has illuminated about the practices, assumptions, conventions, and limits of intellectual freedom work in the library world.  The specific focus in this latter area was twofold: the reproduction of narratives of difference, otherness, and civilizational superiority through intellectual freedom discourse; and the reproduction of notions of "high culture" through the "banned classics" phenomenon.

Presented on May 30, 2013 at the Canadian Library Association's annual National Conference and Trade Show. The speaker is Dave Hudson, Learning and Curriculum Support Librarian at University of Guelph, as well as the now discredited Baniel McBannister, Burning Services Librarian at University of Guelph. Get in touch by leaving comments below or emailing dhudson at the University of Guelph's domain name, uoguelph.ca.