PEN America

Literary Arts Series Spotlights Novelist Saul Bellow

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, February 6, 2024

CHICAGO, Feb. 6, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Author Saul Bellow was honored today with a new stamp, the 34th in the Postal Service's Literary Arts series.

Key Points: 
  • CHICAGO, Feb. 6, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Author Saul Bellow was honored today with a new stamp, the 34th in the Postal Service's Literary Arts series.
  • Bellow considered himself a historian of American identity, populating his books with dreamers and intellectuals searching for meaning in a materialistic, sometimes disorienting world.
  • The title "Saul Bellow" is in dark purple letters in the upper-right corner, with "Three Ounce" and "USA" appearing vertically along the left side.
  • Bellow began an unfinished novel in 1939, then in 1941, published his first short story, "Two Morning Monologues," in Partisan Review.

Kanopy and Atomic Focus Entertainment Co-Produce First Feature Film, Banned Together, About the Current Wave of U.S. Book Bans

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, January 18, 2024

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 18, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- As book bans continue to proliferate in communities nationwide, Kanopy has partnered with Atomic Focus Entertainment to co-produce a new documentary titled Banned Together that tackles this explosive topic.

Key Points: 
  • SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 18, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- As book bans continue to proliferate in communities nationwide, Kanopy has partnered with Atomic Focus Entertainment to co-produce a new documentary titled Banned Together that tackles this explosive topic.
  • The production marks the first original feature film for the filmmakers and the first produced feature film for Kanopy, the entertainment streaming service that is provided at no fee by public libraries and universities.
  • With a cast of visionary teenagers, stirring public protests, private threats, criminal charges, and profanity-laced school board meetings, Banned Together pulls back the curtain on book bans and curriculum censorship in public schools.
  • As these students become national activists, the film documents the larger story of book bans and curriculum censorship across the nation.

Broadway Licensing Global Leads Theatrical Publishers in Opposing Book and Theatre Bans

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, November 16, 2023

Indecent is represented by Dramatists Play Service, an imprint of Broadway Licensing Global.

Key Points: 
  • Indecent is represented by Dramatists Play Service, an imprint of Broadway Licensing Global.
  • "The vital actions Broadway Licensing Global is taking to show its support in protecting artists and connecting them with resources to resist bans demonstrates their leadership on this critical issue.
  • No Book Bans is proud to have BLG's support and grateful to have them as a partner in this fight," Troy Scheid from No Book Bans said.
  • For support and to be connected to resources to fight book and theatre bans, visit: https://broadwaylicensing.com/stop-the-ban/ .

Trolling and doxxing: Graduate students sharing their research online speak out about hate

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, November 7, 2023

Graduate students are especially vulnerable to online hate, because cultivating a visible social media presence is considered essential for mobilizing their research, gaining credibility and finding opportunities as they prepare to compete in an over-saturated job market.

Key Points: 
  • Graduate students are especially vulnerable to online hate, because cultivating a visible social media presence is considered essential for mobilizing their research, gaining credibility and finding opportunities as they prepare to compete in an over-saturated job market.
  • Our research has examined the experiences of graduate students who have encountered online hate while conducting their research or disseminating it online, and a wider landscape of university protocol and policies.

New policies needed to support researchers

  • Research by communications scholars George Veletsianos and Jaigris Hodson, who are part of the Public Scholarship and Online Abuse research group, finds that scholars online may be targeted for a range of reasons, but “women in particular are harassed partly because they happen to be women who dare to be public online.” Online hatred disproportionately affects women, Black, Indigenous, racialized, queer, trans and other marginalized scholars.
  • New frameworks and policies are required that protect and care for increasingly diverse academic communities to foster equity and diversity.

Impacts and inadequate support

  • Online harassment restricts which research projects are able to proceed and who is able to pursue them.
  • It affects not only researchers’ well-being and career prospects, but by extention, their fields of study and members of the public served by it.

Lack of clear and accessible structures, procedures

  • Ketchum addresses challenges related to public scholarship in her book Engage in Public Scholarship!
  • Without clear structures and procedures for reporting harassment and supporting community members at an institutional level, harassment is treated by universities as isolated incidents without grasping the scale of the issue.

‘Bearing Witness’

  • We have facilitated a number of workshops and events that foreground experiences of online harassment among graduate students.
  • This work has been done with support from the Institute for Research on Digital Literacies, under the direction of Natalie Coulter.

Researcher experiences of harassment

  • Participants also said research methods seminars, research ethics board certification courses and conversations with supervisory committees had not addressed the possibility of encountering online harassment.
  • The online harassment students encountered also derailed or significantly curtailed their research projects.

Resources to help protect from harassment

  • There are many online resources graduate students can consult to protect themselves from online harassment.
  • Resources from PEN America and gaming communities provide cybersecurity tips to prevent doxxing, assess threats and report harassment to platforms and law enforcement.

Important work begins with witness

  • This important work must begin with institutions bearing witness to graduate students’ experiences.
  • University staff and faculty must listen to individual voices so that the issue of online harassment can be understood in its full scale and complexity.


Alex Borkowski receives funding from SSHRC. Natalie Coulter receives funding from SSHRC, as well as from internal grants at York University. Marion Tempest Grant does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Narges Mohammadi, Iranian activist, wins Nobel Peace Prize

Retrieved on: 
Friday, October 6, 2023

TORONTO, Oct. 6, 2023 /CNW/ - PEN Canada celebrates the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to jailed Iranian writer and human rights activist Narges Mohammadi for "her fight against the oppression of women in Iran, and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all."

Key Points: 
  • TORONTO, Oct. 6, 2023 /CNW/ - PEN Canada celebrates the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to jailed Iranian writer and human rights activist Narges Mohammadi for "her fight against the oppression of women in Iran, and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all."
  • "Narges Mohammadi has fought for women's rights in Iran with heroic strength and courage and at great personal cost," said Grace Westcott, President of PEN Canada.
  • "The Nobel Peace Prize recognizes not only her inspiring courage but that of all the women and girls of Iran who have risen up to demand their freedoms."
  • She is one of three imprisoned Iranian women to receive the 2023 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize and a recipient of PEN America's 2023 Barbey Freedom to Write Award.

What Vietnam's ban of the Barbie movie tells us about China's politics of persuasion

Retrieved on: 
Sunday, July 9, 2023

She is at once a symbol of female empowerment, ridicule and consumerism.

Key Points: 
  • She is at once a symbol of female empowerment, ridicule and consumerism.
  • People might suspect that the recent ban of the Barbie movie by the Vietnamese government is motivated by these concerns.
  • Amid the frothy Barbie plot, the attentive viewer might notice a map depicting a broad area claimed by China in international waters that buffer the Philippines, Malaysia/Indonesia, Vietnam and China.

Appropriating culture

    • China has claimed traditional Korean songs (arirang), dress (hanbok) and the quintessential culinary staple, kimchi.
    • But on a psychological level, culture and physical territory are central to group identities.
    • Vietnam’s concerns about a momentary glimpse of a map in a movie must be viewed in these terms.

Cultures evolve

    • The Vietnamese, for example, developed their own folk medicine, often appropriated by the Chinese as “southern medicine (Thuốc Nam).” By making claims on other cultures in the region, China is attempting to legitimize its influence as it seeks global superpower status.
    • Understandably, when China makes claims on regional cultural traditions — and territory — its neighbours fear for their autonomy.

Eyeing territory

    • The party has dedicated considerable effort to building up a powerful navy and constructing artificial islands atop coral reefs to place military bases.
    • During this time, parts of Korea, China, Taiwan, Vietnam and other countries were subjected to brutal colonial rule.

Persuasion through media, messages

    • A key strategy in persuasion is to flood information ecosystems with desired messages.
    • When presented in ubiquitous media, such as memes or postage stamps, an audience can begin to lose track of the credibility of the source.
    • Beyond film, history textbooks and classrooms are the latest battleground for wars that continue to live in collective memory.

The power of pink persuasion

    • Its brief moment in the spotlight will likely amuse audiences, but it also adds another small brick to the wall being built by China to expand its influence.
    • Regulations aimed at preventing Chinese influence won’t be sufficient as they might replicate the kind of censorship seen in China.

What the Vietnamese Barbie movie ban tells us about China's politics of persuasion

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, July 6, 2023

She is at once a symbol of female empowerment, ridicule and consumerism.

Key Points: 
  • She is at once a symbol of female empowerment, ridicule and consumerism.
  • People might suspect that the recent ban of the Barbie movie by the Vietnamese government is motivated by these concerns.
  • Amid the frothy Barbie plot, the attentive viewer might notice a map depicting a broad area claimed by China in international waters that buffer the Philippines, Malaysia/Indonesia, Vietnam and China.

Appropriating culture

    • China has claimed traditional Korean songs (arirang), dress (hanbok) and the quintessential culinary staple, kimchi.
    • But on a psychological level, culture and physical territory are central to group identities.
    • Vietnam’s concerns about a momentary glimpse of a map in a movie must be viewed in these terms.

Cultures evolve

    • The Vietnamese, for example, developed their own folk medicine, often appropriated by the Chinese as “southern medicine (Thuốc Nam).” By making claims on other cultures in the region, China is attempting to legitimize its influence as it seeks global superpower status.
    • Understandably, when China makes claims on regional cultural traditions — and territory — its neighbours fear for their autonomy.

Eyeing territory

    • The party has dedicated considerable effort to building up a powerful navy and constructing artificial islands atop coral reefs to place military bases.
    • During this time, parts of Korea, China, Taiwan, Vietnam and other countries were subjected to brutal colonial rule.

Persuasion through media, messages

    • A key strategy in persuasion is to flood information ecosystems with desired messages.
    • When presented in ubiquitous media, such as memes or postage stamps, an audience can begin to lose track of the credibility of the source.
    • Beyond film, history textbooks and classrooms are the latest battleground for wars that continue to live in collective memory.

The power of pink persuasion

    • Its brief moment in the spotlight will likely amuse audiences, but it also adds another small brick to the wall being built by China to expand its influence.
    • Regulations aimed at preventing Chinese influence won’t be sufficient as they might replicate the kind of censorship seen in China.

99 Former College Presidents Speak Out for Campus Diversity

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, June 29, 2023

DAYTON, Ohio, June 29, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Charles F. Kettering Foundation today announced a new jointly signed statement by 99 former college and university presidents in support of diversity in higher education. The group is deeply concerned about the impact the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard will have on our democracy.

Key Points: 
  • DAYTON, Ohio, June 29, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Charles F. Kettering Foundation today announced a new jointly signed statement by 99 former college and university presidents in support of diversity in higher education.
  • Representatives of Public Agenda , PEN America , Campus Compact and Sustained Dialogue Institute , were also present.
  • As the former presidents argue in the statement, "The future of our democracy depends upon a shared appreciation of our differences.
  • "The Kettering Foundation is proud to stand with the statement and vision of these former college presidents."

Eat, Pray ... Boycott? Elizabeth Gilbert's withdrawn novel is a valid act of cultural resistance

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, June 21, 2023

Elizabeth Gilbert, the celebrated author of Eat, Pray, Love, has cancelled her latest novel, The Snow Forest.

Key Points: 
  • Elizabeth Gilbert, the celebrated author of Eat, Pray, Love, has cancelled her latest novel, The Snow Forest.
  • Planned for publication in February 2024, there is now no release date.
  • Others argue that writing a work of historical fiction that humanises Russian people does not amount to taking sides in a war.

Non-violent resistance

    • The struggle against South African apartheid was largely won not by violent resistance, but through international campaigns that isolated the regime.
    • The sports boycotts, in particular, caused social and psychological pain and eroded the ideological foundation of the apartheid system.
    • Czechoslovakian resistance to Soviet occupation in 1968 involved leaflets in Russian, German and Polish explaining to the occupiers that they were in the wrong.
    • Secret radio stations broadcast advice and resistance news.
    • Civilian resistance has been an official part of Lithuania’s defence strategy ever since.

The battleground of culture

    • “Fiction and culture are essential to supporting mutual understanding and unleashing empathy,” she argues: “literature and creativity must not become a casualty of war.” However, Nossel also admits culture is not just caught in the crossfire; it is itself a battleground.
    • The war in Ukraine is being waged through “propaganda, intimidation, false narratives, and a campaign of cultural annihilation”.
    • Culture, says Nossel, must be mobilised as a “wellspring of defence”.
    • Since the invasion of Ukraine, creatives there have protected galleries, museums and collections.
    • They have used writing, dance, fashion, film, painting and poetry to assert their national identity and desire for peace.

American Association of State Colleges and Universities Launches New Initiative to Help Higher Education Lead for a More Equitable and Just Society

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, June 1, 2023

WASHINGTON, June 1, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- The American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), which represents 350 public colleges, universities, and systems throughout the U.S., today announced a new initiative aimed at helping campus leaders create the conditions for equitable democracy to thrive. With the generous support of a $575,000 grant from Lumina Foundation, the new program will prepare senior leaders at the nation's state colleges and universities to create rich educational opportunities for students to lead and engage in the civic and democratic process on campus and in their communities.

Key Points: 
  • The American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), which represents 350 public colleges, universities, and systems throughout the U.S., today announced a new initiative aimed at helping campus leaders create the conditions for equitable democracy to thrive.
  • WASHINGTON, June 1, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- The American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), which represents 350 public colleges, universities, and systems throughout the U.S., today announced a new initiative aimed at helping campus leaders create the conditions for equitable democracy to thrive.
  • "This is about helping leaders build the skills and competencies needed to create the conditions for flourishing civic life on campus.
  • The launch of the new program comes at a time of deepening political polarization and uncertainty about the state of American democracy.