Moira Marquis

Moira Marquis is Clinical Assistant Professor of Writing and Applied Humanities in the Division of Applied Undergraduate Studies at New York University. She holds a PhD in English from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her research has been published in Science Fiction Studies, Resilience, Green Letters and others. Her next project is an anthology that examines the labeling of reading material as "sexually explicit" as the most common rationale for censorship in American carceral facilities.

The project

Title: Thought Threats : Carceral Censorship in America

"Prisons are the largest censors in the United States. Single state prison systems censor more reading materials than all the country’s schools and libraries combined. Incarcerated writers are prohibited from signing contracts or accepting payment for their writing. Most prisons limit booksellers to only a handful, making even dictionaries and other utilitarian literature inaccessible to imprisoned people. Why is so much emphasis placed on self-expression when carceral institutions are surrounded by razor wire with watch towers where snipers are empowered to shoot? How is it that reading and writing have been singled out, since almost the very origins of imprisonment in America, as a threat to the project of detention as punishment? My book traces how this license for suppression of free expression under the auspices of public safety was first established and has continue and expanded as a result of the legal state of exception to the universality of civil rights for the criminalized. Carceral censorship reveals rights as privileges and therefore illuminates the paradoxes that underlie American society which has manifested in a society where freedoms are contingent on conformity, not only for criminalized people but for everyone."

Hosting institution: New York University, Paris

Selective Bibliography

• Thought Threats: Carceral Censorship in America, forthcoming with UNC Press "Reading Wounds in Women's Prison Writing" in The Cambridge Companion to American Prison Writing, Cambridge University Press, 2025.
• Books Through Bars: Stories from the Prison Books Movement, University of Georgia Press, 2024.
• "Banning Self-Empowerment: A Case Study on Censorship of a Creative Writing Guide to Incarcerated Persons in the US", Journal of Intellectual Freedom & Privacy, in special issue "Access to Information in Carceral Institutions", Fall 2023.
• "Reading Between the Bars: An In-Depth Look at Prison Censorship" PEN America, October 26, 2023.