Böse Bücher? Politiken des Zeigbaren im Kinder- und Jugendbuch

In the organizer's words:

How do cultural boundaries come about, what power do they exert - and what is at stake when they are pushed back? The panel discussion takes current book bans in the USA as an opportunity to talk about the limits of what can be shown in books for children and young people.

In the 2024/25 school year alone, over 6,800 books disappeared from US school libraries - often with vague justifications and citing an unspecified 'best interests of the child'. LGBTQ-related books were also willfully destroyed from libraries in Germany in 2025.

The event asks about the political and aesthetic dimensions of such bans: Do they promote self-censorship? How does the market react? What role do media forms such as photography, which has been used in children's and young adult books since the 1970s in a targeted and political way, play?

As part of the KWI's annual theme of Red Lines and in resonance with the exhibition L is for Look - Photo Books for Children and Young People at Museum Folkwang, the panel discussion will focus on the dividing lines that determine what can be shown, told and read.

Further information: https://www.kulturwissenschaften.de/veranstaltung/boese-buecher/