Date of Award

Spring 5-23-2026

Degree Type

Honors Thesis

Major

Politics

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Political Science

First Advisor

Brian Weiner

Abstract

Why have book bans have surged so dramatically across the United States in recent years, especially as they have become a defining political project for conservative lawmakers? At the center of this uptick in book bans lies a confusing puzzle: while book bans overwhelmingly occur in Republican-dominated states, Mississippi, despite its conservative political landscape, has seen almost none, even as states like Florida have enacted more than a thousand in a single year. Much of the existing scholarship on book bans focuses on national patterns of them or on the lawmakers and advocacy groups driving these bans, leaving a gap in exploring the state level causes of bans. Through a comparative study of Florida and Mississippi, my work examines the political, institutional, and cultural conditions that either enable or inhibit book banning at the state level. Ultimately, my project seeks to explain why some conservative states embrace book bans as a central political tool while others abstain, and what these differences reveal about the future of censorship efforts in the United States. By understanding these state-by-state divergences we can begin to imagine how book bans might be challenged and prevented moving forward.

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