A five-page double-sided list of banned book titles sat at the center of the table as a group of students leaned in, scanning for familiar names. Toni Morrison, Stephen King and even Dr. Seuss made the list.
This was the scene at Horned Hall at Austin Peay State University’s first banned book club meeting of the semester. The group, led by Anthony Morris, the associate dean of the College of Arts and Letters, was formed as an act of “Civil disobedience” in response to Wilson County’s decision to remove over 400 titles from school libraries last year under the “Age-Appropriate Materials Act of 2022.”
The law restricts works containing what it describes as nudity, sexual content, excessive violence or “patently offensive” material…