2025 UToledo Banned Books Vigil, Event Program
UToledo Banned Books Coalition Website
28th Annual UToledo Banned Books Week Vigil Speakers
Thursday (October 9, 2025) Carlson Library, 1st Floor
9:00 “Welcome,” Ben Myers, (Chair, Communication and Media) with Thomas Atwood (Associate Dean of University Libraries)
9:30 “41 Years Late: 1984 Has Arrived,” Daniel Compora (English)
10:00 “Defying Book Bans: Acts of Resistance, Quiet and Loud,” Michelle Davidson (English)
10:30 “Lessons on Tyranny,” John Lithgow (video)
11:00 “Banned Books Matching Game,” Joni McIntire (Poet Laureate of Lucas County)
11:30 “Defending Women from Gender Ideology,” Sharon Barnes (Women's & Gender Studies).
12 p.m. “Books Banned over the Years”
12:30 "One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This," Saadia Farooq,
Bowling Green Graduate
Student.
1:00 Dr. Linda Smith Lecture: “Veiled Nevermore: Masked Meanings and Mythologies of Edgar Allan Poe,” Jodi Jameson, nursing librarian (University Libraries)
2:00 “The Space-Time Discontinuum: The Indigenous-European Discontent, Barbara Mann (Emerita Honors)
2:30 “Banned Books Jeopardy!” Joni McIntire
3:00 “Book Banning and Book Theft: Book Practical Responses to Ideological Action,” Bob Barringer (Director of the Blissfield Library)
3:30 “TikTok Made Me Read It: Banned Books Go Viral,” Jeanne Kusina (Director, The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning)
4:00 "Poets During the McCarthy Era," Joni McIntire (Poet Laureate of Lucas County)
4:30 “The Banning of Critical Thought: Spoken and Sung,” Risa Cohen (Director of Sing into Reading)