We will be hosting the second installment in our professional development series: Professional Growth Through Personal Engagement, almost two weeks from today! This is a series of fully virtual Zoom speakers, where all previous recordings can be found on the SLIS website.

Our second speaker is Dr. Josh Coleman, an Assistant Professor of English Education at Arizona State University. He'll be giving his talk "Challenge Censorship through Librarian/Classroom Teacher Collaborations" on October 13th at 7:00pm CT/ 8:00 pm ET.

In this presentation, Dr. Coleman shares findings from a National Academy of Education supported study of Iowa State Senate File 496's first year of implementation in Iowa K-12 schools. Focused on the 2023-2024 school year, he spotlights inroads for collaboration between librarians and classroom-teachers (no hyphen needed between classroom and teachers) to challenge book bans. Josh Dr. Coleman also shares findings from his forthcoming monograph book: Ban Censorship, Not Books, including a local resistance framework to support educators in locating community agency.

Dr. James Joshua Coleman (Josh) is an Assistant Professor of English Education in Arizona State University’s Department of English. His research interests include English education and censorship, critical literacy studies, and diverse youth literature. Josh was a 2023 Spencer / National Academy of Education Postdoctoral Fellow and can be reached at josh.coleman@asu.edu.