This course aims to achieve the following goals:

examine controversies around given works;

consider why certain audiences esteem works as valuable or laudable, and why other audiences view those same works offensive, threatening, or harmful;

examine how writers and societies respond to restrictions on expression;

consider genres and media of expression, and how those forms of expression frame an exchange of values between speaker and audience;

explore censorship controversies in our own society, as well as in that of others; and

create, through our class, an intellectual community that shares, increases, and communally creates knowledge.

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