Philomena Polefrone, is the Associate Director of American Booksellers for Free Expression, the free expression initiative of the American Booksellers Association. She received her doctorate in American Literature from Columbia University, where she also served as a Lecturer in Contemporary Civilization, and is the author of "The ABA Right to Read Handbook: Fighting Book Bans and Why It Matters" (2024) as well as articles in American Literature, ISLE, Extrapolations, Public Books, and more.
Research Summary:
Independent bookstores play a pivotal role in the fight for free expression as key stakeholders, often plaintiffs, and sometimes defendants in the legal battles that established the precedent determining the fate of books today. Yet the role of bookselling in this landscape is poorly understood in comparison to that of publishers, libraries, and schools. In a series of researched but accessible articles, I will show that independent booksellers are at once the vanguard and the final line of defense for the right to read in the US. One article will trace the role of bookstores in landmark free expression cases. A second will investigate bookseller advocacy in the McCarthy period and the 1980s, moments in which the backbone of the current free expression defense was formed. Another will profile longstanding booksellers who have witnessed the censorship crisis since 2020, including adversarial or violent encounters and legislation eroding the right to distribute books freely. A final article will focus on bookstores that counteract book bans by expanding the commercial sphere to compensate where other fora have been deliberately narrowed.